Sting (fixture)

Sting is like playing pretend. Imagine you and your friends want to play a game where you’re all spies, so you set up a secret mission in your backyard. You decide who gets to be the spy and who gets to be the bad guy. You plan out what you’ll say and do, and you have special props like pretend binoculars and walkie-talkies to make it more exciting.

In a way, a sting is like playing pretend for adults who are doing it for a special reason. Instead of playing spies or cops and robbers, they are pretending to be someone they’re not (like a criminal or a buyer of illegal goods) in order to catch people who are breaking the law.

The pretend mission is called a “fixture” because it involves a certain scenario or situation that is set up to catch people. For example, police might set up a sting operation where they pretend to be drug dealers and wait for someone to come and try to buy drugs from them. Once the person does that, the police can arrest them and charge them with a crime.

The point is to catch people doing bad things, but it can’t work unless everyone involved keeps the pretending a secret until the right moment. That way, the people being caught won’t know what’s going on until it’s too late. That’s why sting operations are carefully planned out and usually involve a lot of people – to make sure everything goes smoothly and no one gives the game away too soon.