The room smelt of not having been smoked in - Ronald Knox
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Technology baits car criminals
US CRIMINALS are being collared by cars designed to act as electronic mouse traps.
In Arlington County just outside of Washington, cars packed with hi-tech gadgets are being left around for thieves to steal.
The tea-leaf breaks into the car and is filmed doing it. At the same time an alarm goes off in the police headquarters, and a GPS device automatically begins tracking the stolen car.
Coppers converge on the GPS signal and surround the car.
If the thief tries to drive off, the police flick a switch and the car stops and the doors and windows are locked.
Apparently more than 100 criminals have been nicked in this way. Mousetrap cars are apparently Honda Civics and Accords and Toyota Camrys. According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau these are the most popular cars to have stolen.
The police have been helped out by the insurance companies who have been stumping up cash to kit out the electronic mousetraps.
Cops also have the comedy value of showing the video of the smug car thieves having the smile wiped from their faces at the Christmas party. µ
L'Inq
AP
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The City of Vancouver in British Columbia has been doing these for years and they post the videos on the net. Some of the funniest videos I have ever seen. www.baitcar.com .
Gees guys, this is soooo old :)

I remember watching this on TV over 10yrs ago, they thought it was new flash gps software which overlayed the cars position onto a map. You can buy these kits and get them installed into your car, you get a mobile txt message when your car gets nicked and a central company tracks it for you, and you can view it on the web, so you can watch your cars fate in real time, would be quite emotional i bet! Ofcourse theves can simply tow it into a steal covered trailer and get away like that...
Make it harder for sneaky thieves and some will migrate to the easier (relative to fighting high tech bait cars) option - jacking cars.
These features are not just used on car thieves. Onstar has even been used for wiretapping its owners.
This methodology has been around for at least 7 years in our juristiction (BC, Canada). Our local provincial car insurance agency (no private car insurers here, thank god) even had a very popular TV advert of an addict high on meth while on a joy ride (from inside the car) to advertise to thieves that they can expect to be caught.

And the funny thing is that the local cops have "deported" the 10 highest car thieves back to their original juristictions to face their crimes there so "we" localy don't have to pay for their incarceration.

Finally - the "justice" system at work. Now, if they could only get the criminals to "give" back to the community.
Entrapment requires either coercion by police into committing the act, or commission of a crime by police in an attempt to make someone follow suit.

A cop cannot (legally) give you a ticket for following them, whatever the speed, if they do not have their lights/siren on. That is entrapment.

Leave something shiny in a position that clearly does not suggest that it is a "finders keepers" deal, anyone who steals it is FUBAR if they are on camera.
Entrapment is when a person "is induced or persuaded by law enforcement officers or their agents to commit a crime that he had no previous intent to commit". 

Having a car parked with a few high-tech toys in it isn't even *close* to entrapment. If someone from law enforcement paid or told the thieves to steal the cars, that would be entrapment.
No, this isn't entrapment at all. The thieves would have broken into a car anyways. Entrapment is causing a person to do something illegal he or she would not have done otherwise.
They are called Bait cars in the US and law enforcement has been using them for years.

Doesn't this kind of seem a bit like entrapment?