Entrapment Or Routine Police Procedure?

On September 9, 2009 at 9:15 a.m. a female Atlanta Police officer parked her police cruiser in a marked parking place on Pine Street two parking places down from Peachtree Street. Upon stepping from the car she placed a $20 dollar bill under the driver-side wiidshield wiper. She walked across Peachtree Street to the Zone 5 police precinct. She entered the building and stood watching the car she had just parked. A Task Force staff person witnessed and wrote down what he saw. A second staff person photographed the car in the parking place. The car was moved from the parking place just before noon. I do not know when or by whom the $20 bill was removed.

The parking place that held the cruiser with the money is adjacent to the Peachtree-Pine Center operated by the Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless. The facility is an emergency shelter for some 575-650 homeless men, primarily Atlantans and predominently African-Americans. At 9:15 a.m. some 300 homeless men would be in or about the facility. Could the action of this officer possibly be entrapment? With Atlanta’s crime scene abundant with car jackings and drive-by shootings and endless drug dealings at Pine Street and Courtland 220 feet from the parked cruiser, is this the best use of Atlanta’s police power putting cash under windshield-wiper blades? I remember and bless The Reverend Joseph Lowery whom I heard say several times, “And the beat goes on.”

James Wilson Beaty, PhD
Jeremiah 22.16