On Aug. 2, a white bait truck was left partially-opened, appeared in the Englewood section of Chicago’s south side. It was parked near a basketball court where neighborhood residents were out in full force enjoying the hot, summer weather.
An abandoned truck in a low-income neighborhood isn’t necessarily strange, but this particular truck’s cabin was filled with Nike Air Force Ones and Christian Louboutin shoes. Why would a truck with such expensive cargo be left on the South Side of Chicago?
According to local activist Charles McKenzie, it was a “bait truck” placed by law enforcement to lure would-be thieves to their arrest. In a neighborhood where the median income is roughly $20,000 a year and is the third worst neighborhood in the city, why would the Chicago Police Department waste valuable resources and time on expensive shoes to bait poor people who obviously would want these types of items if they had access to them?
McKenzie, of the crime prevention group God’s Gorillas, filmed the all-white crew of cops as neighborhood men warned one another about the alleged intent of the Chicago Police Department.
Mckenzie said stated: “Englewood residents have nothing to lose.”
Englewood’s poverty rate is at least 40 percent, by some estimates, and more than 60 percent, according to others. While the community is known as a high-crime area, in 2017 shootings and homicides in the neighborhood dropped by 44 percent and 45 percent, respectively, the Chicago Tribune reported. Car theft also went down.
Mckenzie’s concern is that bait operations including bait trucks like this could lead to the arrest of people without criminal records. He said that he watched officers arrest two people who attempted to steal from the bait truck last week. Their arrests, and his belief that some shoes in the truck cost hundreds of dollars alarmed him.
“Anything over $500 is a felony, and they’re going to get some guys who don’t [already] have a felony and charge them,” he said.
Bait trucks are typically used in high-crime, urban areas to deter crime. However, it appears to look like entrapment. In 2015, American Civil Liberties Union senior policy analyst Jay Stanley described how and why bait devices are supposed to be used.
“The basic criteria should be if police are trying to catch crime happening on its own, or are they trying to create crime where it otherwise wouldn’t happen,” Stanley said. “I don’t think a bait object — if used in the way everyone imagines it’s used, which is to catch a thief — is a civil liberties problem.”
