“These programs,” said Sonja Starr, a criminal law professor at the University of Michigan Law School, “are worrying the courts.””A significant thing about it is that although these [decisions] have emerged in the context of a particular type of policing program, the reverse-sting operations, they could potentially set a more generous defendant-friendly standard for selective policing more broadly.”

More about Starr on police tactics, potential entrapment, and the racial disparity in ­reverse-sting arrests >