what exactly is a sting operation?
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A sting is a police operation where they attempt to catch someone while they’re committing a crime, by setting up the crime themselves.
Here’s a simple example. I’m an undercover cop, posing as someone absentminded who leaves his expensive car parked in a sketchy alley, with an expensive phone sitting on the dash. I park it and go into a nearby store, while other police watch the car or monitor it with GPS. When someone breaks into the car or tries to steal it, they can catch the criminal in the act.
Same deal with something like drugs. Send in someone posing as a buyer, and once it’s clear that the suspect has possession of drugs or completes the sale, they pounce and arrest the suspect. Same principle could apply to prostitution, or child pornography, or any other illegal sale.
The important thing about police stings (where they’re legal to perform) is that they avoid *entrapment*, which is inducing someone to commit a crime that they otherwise wouldn’t have committed. Like for example, if I threatened you into buying drugs, like “buy me $1,000 worth of meth or I’ll kill your family”, and then my police friends arrested you in a sting. That would be entrapment, because you ordinarily wouldn’t have bought those drugs. A successful sting only gives the suspect the *opportunity* to commit a crime, not the reason or desire to commit it in the first place.
It’s basically a bust where the setup is some sort of false pretense. Say the cops are aware of a known drug dealer, but don’t have evidence on him. What they’ll do is send a cop in to pose as a buyer. They establish that the dealer possessed drugs and was willing to trade them for money, then boom. They make the arrest. That’s called a sting operation.
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