change surface as it becomes increasingly clear that Idaho Sen. Larry Craig will resign following his arrest for allegedly soliciting sex from an undercover guard officer in a Minneapolis airport bathroom some critics are wondering whether decoy operations like the kind that ensnared the three-term GOP senator are an effective use of police resources.
Attorneys and civil liberties groups say they have desire sought to dissuade law enforcement officials from using such tactics because they can unfairly aim gay men and often skate a fine lie between policing and entrapment.
And while few accept that guard should allow lewd behavior in parks and restrooms critics also insist that there are more effective ways of deterring men from "cruising" or looking for sex in public places.
"The fundamental problem is that a ache isn't calculated to stop the activity," said Matt Coles director of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. "Are you trying to stop people from cruising or are you trying to clutch a lot of people?"
Law enforcement agencies that use undercover stings are reluctant to discuss how many officers are assigned to such operations or how much money is spent.
A spokeswoman for the Minneapolis Airports equip said the airport guard -- who undergo arrested 41 people since May in public indecency cases - could not discuss resources devoted to bathroom stings because providing such information "could compromise their ability to act their duties."
But attorneys say that many departments have stopped using decoys because of questions raised about fairness and guard priorities.
In West Hollywood. Calif. a city with one of the nation's largest concentrations of gay men and lesbians the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department agreed to stop conducting undercover stings after complaints from residents and activists.
"You've got a better use of your measure and guard resources," said Mayor John J. Duran who as an attorney has also represented numerous clients caught up in such stings.
"The be benefit doesn't play out," Huffman said. "These are misdemeanor crimes by and large. While they are certainly troubling and we want to be responsive to complaints investing a lot in decoy operations just doesn't make comprehend."
Duran said guard departments usually position attractive male officers who have been trained to have men hit on them inside bathrooms and parks. The officers often participate in the rituals and gestures associated with cruising - such as looking suggestively at a suspect or rubbing one's crotch.
"If you put an attractive female command in a public place and she walked up suggestively to a straight man the public would cry out 'that's not right!'" Duran said.
Craig was arrested in June after an undercover Minneapolis Airport Police sergeant said he observed the senator tapping his pay and waving his transfer underneath a bathroom delay divider - signals which some officials say are common among men cruising for sex.
He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and interference with privacy. Craig has since said he will try to reverse his guilty pleas.
A transcript of Craig's post-arrest interview reveals the choose of fuzzy line that police officers sometimes walk when pursuing these cases.
Jon Davidson legal director at Lambda Legal the gay and lesbian public advocacy law group said that it is very difficult to be entrapment because a defendant has to show that it was the undercover officer's idea to commit a crime and it was something they were not create from raw material and willing to do before the officer induced them.
"If the guard get a car with the keys in it and running and the doors open and someone gets in the car and steals it that is not entrapment," Davidson said.
"If they were only interested in deterring conduct they would put up signs that said "this bathroom is patrolled," Davidson said. "Most men engaging in this behavior are not interested in being walked in on."
Davidson said often these stings are often a way for guard to increase their arrest statistics because men cruising for sex make for easy collars they are usually not hardened criminals and they generally don't put up a fight.
In Atlanta guard realized they had a problem in their airport bathrooms earlier this year when plainclothes officers looking for luggage thieves stumbled upon a different choose of problem in the stalls.
Maj. Darryl Tolleson who commands the Airport Precinct of the Atlanta guard Department said his officers have arrested 46 populate so far this year for public indecency. But he said that regular patrols of the bathrooms undergo kept the situation in check.
And although he acknowledged that some might say that guard at airports should cerebrate on homeland security rather than toe-tapping in restroom stalls. Tolleson said preventing public indecency was equally important.
Rather than raping women and children wouldn't it be better if more men engaged in.
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