Entrapment...Coming soon to alberta for distracted drivers

I came upon this today and thought how ridiculous this is.

Before you read this article you may want to brush up on the definition of entrapment, what it is and how it's merited.

Entrapment and illegal police activity are both based on the doctrine of abuse of process. 

Entrapment

  v     The authorities provide a person with an opportunity to commit an offence without acting on a reasonable suspicion that this person is already engaged in criminal activity or pursuant to a bona fide inquiry; or

v     Having a reasonable suspicion or acting in the course of a bona fide inquiry, the police go beyond providing an opportunity and induce the commission of an offence.

 

To establish entrapment, the accused is required to demonstrate only that one of the two branches of the test has been met. If successful, the remedy is a stay of proceedings.

According to the guidelines set out by the Supreme Court of Canada, the police are required to have a reasonable suspicion that the accused is already engaged in criminal activity, or must be acting pursuant to a bona fide inquiry. The rationale for requiring reasonable suspicion is “because of the risk that the police will attract people who would not otherwise have any involvement in a crime and because it is not a proper use of the police power to simply go out and test the virtue of people on a random basis.”[2][55]  

In determining whether police conduct goes further than providing an opportunity, a court will assess the following non-exhaustive list of factors:

 

v     The type of crime being investigated and the availability of other techniques for the police detection of its commission;

v     Whether an average person, with both strengths and weaknesses, in the position of the accused would be induced into the commission of a crime;

v     The persistence and number of attempts made by the police before the accused agreed to commit the offence;

v     The type of inducement used by the police, including deceit, fraud, trickery or reward;

v     The timing of the police conduct, in particular whether the police instigated the offence or become involved in ongoing criminal activity;

v     Whether the police conduct involves an exploitation of human characteristics such as the emotions of compassion, sympathy and friendship;

v     Whether the police appear to have exploited a particular vulnerability of a person such as a mental handicap or a substance addiction;

v     The proportionality between the police involvement, as compared to that of the accused, including an assessment of the degree of harm caused or risked by the police, as compared to the accused, and the commission of any illegal acts by the police themselves;

v     The existence of any threats, implied or express, made to the accused by the police or their agents; and

v     Whether the police conduct is directed at undermining other constitutional values.[3][56]

Now that you are brushed up on how entraptment is merited you may want to read this article about police in BC disguising themselves as beggars to entrap distracted drivers in the act. 

B.C. traffic cops disguised as bogus beggars

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By Michael Platt ,Calgary Sun

First posted: Tuesday, March 20, 2012 06:59 PM MDT | Updated: Tuesday, March 20, 2012 07:27 PM MDT

B.C. police officer disguised as a homeless person in bid to nab distracted drivers.

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In five months, Calgary cops managed to nab 1,456 drivers — or rather, 1,456 people texting, dining, changing songs and chattering on their cellphones.

Driving was definitely a secondary concern for the motorists fined under Alberta’s Distracted Driving law, just as it was for the 379 people fined by Edmonton police in February alone.
Three hundred and seventy-nine tickets in one month? An average of 291 distracted drivers every four weeks in Calgary?
That’s some fine police work — or it is, until you measure it against the ingenious tactic being used by RCMP traffic cops in B.C.
Try 4,449 tickets written in a single month, in large part because of a sneaky strategy which puts drivers at ease, even as a police officer peers into their vehicle from a few centimetres away.
“Hello, my name is Constable Martell. If you’re on your cellphone right now, you are about to get a ticket,” reads the hand-drawn cardboard sign, held by the scruffy man in the blue hoodie.
The man posing as a panhandler is actually an RCMP officer, reportedly from Chilliwack, B.C., and his photograph is currently making the rounds online.
We’ve all seen them, the scruffs who hang around at traffic lights begging for spare change, a sob story about lost jobs or similar misfortune scrawled on their cardboard.
When the light turns red, the panhandler wanders among the cars, seeking surplus coins — and most motorists ignore them, going about their business while trying to avoid eye contact.
Stop-light begging is a big city issue, but it’s provided the urban camouflage that’s allowed RCMP officers to walk right up to cars at lights, to see what the driver is doing.
Texting, talking, and so forth are noted — and then the details are radioed to the uniformed officers waiting just up the road, ready to pull the distracted driver over, and issue a ticket.
“Some of the enforcement involves our officers being in plain clothes of one form or another, standing around the intersections,” said Sgt. Peter Thiessen, spokesman for the RCMP Lower Mainland District Regional Police Service.
“Sometimes they appear to be squeegee people or something like that — the Lower Mainland is leading the way with different methods of enforcement.”
A February 2012 enforcement blitz, where the bogus-beggar tactic was part of the plan, resulted in a dramatic increase in tickets — nearly double the year before.
Police in B.C. say the change in tactics may have shown that distracted driving numbers haven’t decreased, so much as drivers are learning to be sneaky.
But with fake panhandlers now staring into cars, so are the police — and with 27 B.C. traffic deaths linked to distracted driving in 2011, sneaky policing isn’t about to stop.
Like Alberta, hands-free phones are allowed in B.C., where the fine for using an electronic device while driving is $167, plus three demerits.
But drivers aren’t getting it, and so Thiessen says drivers in his province — including Albertans visiting B.C. — shouldn’t be surprised to find out that last beggar was a cop.
“It certainly works,” said Thiessen.
“Our stats went up from last year significantly.”
And if police in Edmonton and Calgary choose to follow, it could work in Alberta too.
Provincial Solicitor General Jonathan Denis says B.C.’s traffic-light tactics could certainly be imported by police here, with the full support of the Alberta government.
Denis sees undercover officer strategy as a fair way of catching those driver breaking the rules.
“Often for speeding, the officers will hide somewhere, and I don’t see this as any different from that,” said Denis.
The Sol-Gen, who sets the rules for Alberta police forces but doesn’t tell them how to operate, says he sees no reason for Albertans to complain if police in our big cities start using the panhandler ploy.
“If people are worried about getting distracted driving tickets, they shouldn’t drive distracted,” said Denis.

END OF ARTICLE

Believe whatever you like...but based on my assessment of this article the police are not conducting a bona fide inquiry. But rather making an attempt to locate distracted drivers on a more aggressive level than in the past. They are however providing drivers with an opportunity to commit an offencewithout acting on a reasonable suspicion that this person is already in the act of committing an offence.

They are creating a distraction to drivers by way of disguising themselves as squeegee people and slapping drivers with fine if they are caught taking their eyes off the road (meriting a so called distraction) and how do they justify the action? They can't since they are not following you before hand and have not received any complaints they cannot presume that you were already in the act of committing this offence. Entrapment at it's finest coming soon to Alberta. DISTRACTED DRIVERS...BEWARE