> People could (if police isn't interested in provoking crime which is illegal in some jurisdictions) plant nice looking bikes with transmitters, wait for them

> People could (if police isn't interested in provoking crime which is illegal in some jurisdictions) plant nice looking bikes with transmitters, wait for them to be stolen, and follow the bike to what's presumably some kind of stash of stolen bikes. Number One Rule of Internet Legal Advice Forums: "No, that isn't entrapment." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait_car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait_car Those bikes would be equivalent to bait cars, which are well-established tools to catch car thieves. The car doesn't do anything except sit in a "bad" neighborhood; everything else is entirely the work of the would-be thief. It's about as far on the good side of entrapment as you can get without someone's actual car being lifted. The reason police don't do it for bike thefts is because police have (or think they have) better things to do than hunt down someone's Huffy. > Bait cars are not considered entrapment because they merely afford criminals the opportunity to steal the car; entrapment, on the other hand, constitutes law enforcement persuading or encouraging a person to commit a crime that they would not have committed otherwise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment > Entrapment is a practice whereby a law enforcement agent or agent of the state induces a person to commit a "crime" that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit.[1] It "is the conception and planning of an offense by an officer or agent, and the procurement of its commission by one who would not have perpetrated it except for the trickery, persuasion or fraud of the officer or state agent."[2] "But officer, the bike was just sitting there!" doesn't rise to the level of persuasion.