http://www.avpress.com/n/05/0305_s4.hts
This story kind of gets to me. I wonder if there isn't something else the cops could be doing.................... ???
Four arrested in dropped-wallet sting
This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press
Wednesday, March 5, 2008.
By VERONICA ROCHA
Valley Press Staff Writer
PALMDALE Ca - Four women were arrested Friday on grand theft charges in a sting operation set up to determine whether individuals would turn in a bag or wallet containing $400 to Antelope Valley Mall personnel or law enforcement officials.
However, some of the women believe they were wrongly arrested and never given the chance to hand over the bag or wallet to authorities.
"They were given the opportunity to turn in the property," said Deputy Charles Lemke of the Palmdale Sheriff's Station. "There is no particular prescribed method in how we do it."
Individuals were arrested if they picked up the property and tried to conceal it or didn't immediately turn it over to authorities, who Lemke said were walking around the mall during Friday's sting operation.
An armed uniformed deputy or security guard, he said, walked up and stood next to the individuals who picked up the wallet.
"They made themselves very known," Lemke said.
Martha Valadez , 39, is one of those who believes she wasn't given a chance to turn in the wallet.
"It was like entrapment," she said. "I feel like it is an injustice to all of us."
The mother of four, ages 2½, 7, 10 and 12, said she was sitting in the mall's food courtyard, feeding her three daughters and watching her son, who was inside a game store adjacent to the courtyard.
Valadez said a woman, to whom she said she didn't pay much attention, was sitting across from her. She said she glanced back in the woman's direction, but all she saw was a brown checked wallet.
Valadez said she didn't see the woman leave the table, but Lemke maintained, "She (Valadez) watched the individual actually stand up and walk away."
Valadez said when she saw the wallet, she instantly thought of turning it into authorities. She told one of her daughters to pick up the wallet, but the girl said she was embarrassed to do so.
"We have always turned in things we find," she said. "I have always taught my children to return something they found."
After the daughter finally grabbed the wallet, Valadez said her youngest child, who is being potty trained, asked to use the restroom.
Valadez said she took the wallet from her daughter, then asked her son to hold onto it as she balanced the youngest on her hip.
She and her children headed to a restroom in the hopes of getting into a stall before her daughter soiled herself, she said.
When she walked out of the restroom, two men in plain clothes displayed badges and told her to follow them into a office, where they questioned her.
She told them she intended to turn in to wallet to the proper authorities, but her daughter had to use the restroom.
"It's not an excuse, it's the truth," Valadez said. "They didn't even give me a chance to turn it in.
"I didn't even open it and I don't even know what kind of information was inside."
~more stories of
"not turning it in" at the link~
