Police Stings: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Undercover policing is a staple of movies and TV shows and is used by cops in real life to catch people suspected of breaking laws.

Karen Heg plans to fight a $230 ticket she received on Halloween Day for not stopping to let a 6'4 Donald Duck cross the street.

A cop dressed up as Donald Duck and ticketed people who didn't stop to let him cross.

All ducks, including Donald Duck, have a corkscrew penis.

In the past four decades, sting operations of all types have become a major part of law enforcement in the US.

Drivers for the online ride service Uber were targeted in an LA sting operation.

John Oliver states that the Uber sting operation seems like a "shitty thing to do" given drivers may have been bending the rules to help someone who was telling them they were in need.

John Oliver argues that the police in the Uber sting were not stopping crime but creating it.

Sting operations really took off in the 1970s as police shifted from primarily reacting to crime to trying to prevent it.

As the police use of coercion has been restricted, their use of deception has increased.

In Memphis, all but eight of 1500 sting defendants pleaded guilty, and every one who chose a trial was convicted when the jury saw the tapes.

Sheriff Grady Jud's department in Florida constantly boasts about running online stings, often fishing for arrests concerning sex offenses.

Law enforcement is now reaching out to young men who posted ads on traditional dating sites, forming rapport, then switching the age to trick hesitant men.

ATF agents in one sting suggested a felon take a shotgun, saw it off, and bring it back to them, even providing instructions, to charge him with a more serious crime.

An autistic teenager in California was pressured by an undercover cop, "Daniel Briggs," to buy marijuana.

An investigation into ATF's fake stores found them repeatedly manipulating people with disabilities, including paying a mentally disabled 19-year-old to get a large tattoo on his neck of the fake shop's emblem.

A survey two years ago found that out of 992 terrorism defendants since 9/11, only three were acquitted and four had charges dropped, giving the Justice Department a near-perfect conviction record.