High cost, low-level collars

If being desperate and dumb was a felony, Elaine Lamb would deserve hard time.

Lamb was walking along a North Hollywood street in the middle of the night last November when she spotted an unattended car — engine running, doors wide open — with 30 cartons of cigarettes in a Marlboro box on the passenger seat.

A seasoned criminal might smell a set-up. A drug addict sees a chance to get high.

Lamb grabbed the box of cigarettes and walked off. Thirty seconds later, she was in handcuffs.

Now she’s facing the prospect of a 10-year prison term. She was snagged in a Los Angeles Police Department sting operation that has turned hapless criminals into reality show fodder and landed hundreds of would-be thieves behind bars.

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If Lamb had been a fan of crime shows on the reality network TruTV, she might have recognized the makings of a “Bait Car” episode when she stumbled upon the scene:

An unlocked car is idling, alone on the street. The engine dies after thieves get in and drive off. Cops rush over to make the collar. A hidden camera records it all.

It’s the sort of simple premise that makes for compelling television.

But how much sense does it make in real life — a high-tech, high-priced crime pursuit that mostly gleans low-hanging fruit?

The San Fernando Valley bait car campaign, which began almost two years ago, requires eight officers and a supervisor to run stakeouts four or five nights a week. A good night might result in one or two arrests; some weeks the team had only one collar.

The LAPD stings have been featured on “Bait Car,” and entertaining snippets of unlucky thieves are posted on the department website, lapd.org. The campaign is part of the department’s car theft prevention effort. In high-crime areas of the Valley, bait cars are supposed to attract crooks and teach the rest of us to keep our car doors locked.

Supporters of the sting credit it with helping cut property crime in the Valley by 20% last year.

Valley Sgt. Nate Banry told me that hundreds of criminals have been caught and that publicity probably deterred others. Many of those arrested had long rap sheets. “We want the criminal who’s out there thinking about stealing a car to wonder if every car might be a bait car,” he said.

Or at least every car idling with doors wide open. I imagine that sort of steal me, please scene is like a neon sign flashing BAIT CAR to all but the most dim-witted thieves.

Maybe that’s why so many of those hauled in are like the meth addict who was arrested the night Banry went out with the bait car team.

“Some are people so desperate, they’re just gonna jump in the car and take off,” Banry said. “They’re looking for a quick ride, a quick fix, something to steal” that they can sell or trade for drugs.

The sting isn’t considered entrapment, he said, “because it wouldn’t entice a law-abiding person to commit a crime. If you walked up on a car with the door open and running, would you get in there and drive it off?”

I wouldn’t. So why do I feel there is something vaguely unseemly about the set-up?

City Councilman Dennis Zine, who’s spent 43 years on the police force, said maybe it’s because I’ve never had my car ripped off.

“If you had your car stolen, you’d say, ‘Dammit, why didn’t they protect my car?’

“The job of law enforcement,” Zine said, “is dealing with the element of society that’s not good honest taxpayers, but people taking advantage of and ripping other people off — whether it’s dismembering somebody and dumping them in the Hollywood Hills, or stealing somebody’s car.”

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Elaine Lamb certainly isn’t a candidate for the good citizenship award. But neither is she hacking up people and dumping their body parts.

At 44, Lamb has been in and out of prison for 20 years. She has a rap sheet heavy with drug offenses. You could argue she’s the sort of habitual criminal who ought to be kept behind bars.

But you could also argue — and I do — that it’s in our best interest to help troubled addicts like Lamb stay straight and away from drugs, instead of luring them back to prison with crime-fighting schemes that turn the desperate into sitting ducks.

Lamb has been in and out of drug treatment programs since her last prison stint seven years ago. She was in the grip of a relapse when she took those cigarettes from the car. She’s been charged with felony grand theft, because the retail value of those 30 cartons would be more than $1,000.

Strict state sentencing formulas that add a year for each previous prison term mean that Lamb faces up to 10 years behind bars for that dumb, impulsive grab.

“She didn’t steal the car,” pointed out her attorney, Deputy Public Defender Tamar Toister. “She leaned in, turned off the ignition and took the box of cigarettes.”

The set-up may not be legal entrapment, but it’s “morally outrageous” to the lawyer.

“She didn’t go someplace intending to steal. It was an opportunity created by the police,” said Toister.

“I go to the meetings in my neighborhood and we’re always hearing [from the LAPD] about how they need more officers,” Toister said. “Then I get a case like this and realize there were four officers involved; four officers to arrest this little, bitty woman” who grabbed smokes from an open car.

“I am offended by this,” the lawyer told me. “And I’m offended that nobody else seems to be outraged by it.”

Outrage may be too strong a word, but I suspect this kind of set-up might feed cynicism in other quarters.

When I wrote recently about crime going down in Los Angeles, I heard from dozens of readers convinced that the department manipulates stats by refusing to take reports of petty crimes or padding the tally of gang offenses to hit up taxpayers for more funding.

It is fair to ask if the bait car campaign is a good use of shrinking crime-fighting resources.

And the answer — for now — is no, it’s not.

It comes too late to spare Elaine Lamb, but the bait car program has been discontinued by new Valley Commander Jorge A. Villegas.

“He’d rather have his guys out doing crime suppression than doing a bait car,” Sgt. Banry said.

sandy.banks@latimes.com