Operation Lucky Bag—the NYPD's tactic of arresting people who pick up a satchel laden with cash and valuables that they plant in crowded areas of the city—has drawn lawsuits from those who feel the police assumed too quickly that they wouldn't return the money. But in Deirdre Myers' case, the NYPD didn't even wait for her to touch the wad of fake bills.
In 2010, Myers and her then-15-year-old daughter were sitting on their stoop in the Bronx when the driver of a dark car jumped out of his vehicle and ran, with police in pursuit. When Myers' daughter walked up to inspect the car from its open door, she saw a wad of bills and yelled for her mother. That was when a van of police officers pulled up and forced the two to the ground—the cops and their suspect had acted out the chase to fool potential suspects.
"I thought I was in the Twilight Zone," Myers, who spent more two years fighting charges of possession of stolen property and petty larceny, told the AP. Judge Linda Poust Lopez agreed with Myers' assessment of her arrest, and recently tossed out the charges, ruling that pursuing them "would greatly damage the confidence and trust of the public in the fairness and effectiveness of the criminal justice system, and rightly so."
Myers' attorney, Ann Mauer, called the sting that nabbed her client "certainly the most extreme version of the operation that we've seen."
"You know how embarrassing and humiliating this was?" Myers said. "I'd never been stopped by the police for anything in my life."
Myers is now suing the city. A spokesman for the Law Department declined to comment on the complaint, but stated that "undercover sting operations are lawful and help reduce crime."
The bait car program has existed in the Bronx since 1995, and because of our insatiable thirst for human misery, there is a reality television show depicting the practice: Bait Car.
