51–60 of 225 posts
Those brothers are lucky this stalker was so meek. Things could have easily ended horribly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought this too. But you can feel incredibly powerless if all you do is “let the police handle it.” Even in this instance, nothing would have come of it had they not traced the guy. Prosecution of crime happens after a crime is committed. Cops can’t do much if you’re worried someone will harm you or a loved one. Even if stalking is illegal, cops won’t / can’t feasibly spend the resources investigating and punishin…
Yeah, but like... they didn't even "let the police handle it." They just went straight to "late-night stakeout." > Cops can’t do much if you’re worried someone will harm you or a loved one. You're right, and that would be a scary situation... if they didn't have more than enough evidence for the police to get involved. Repeated, late-night visits to leave threatening messages would be plenty for a restraining order i…
The path from "call police" to "bad guy caught" to "bad guy in jail" is non-linear.
Maybe obvious, but uh: don’t fucking do this! I get it, I'm an older brother, I would wanna go ballistic too. But the fact that these guys skipped over "notify the police" and went straight to "seek out in-person confrontation" is insane! Stalkers are not people in their right mind. Staking out and planning to “citizen’s arrest”(???) someone who has repeatedly visited late at night to threaten and harass is NOT SAFE…
Unfortunately, you want to look like a perfect victim if you're going before a judge over something like this.
Same goes if you want law enforcement to take you seriously. It's hard enough to get them to take stalking victims seriously as it is.
But I also get it. The chances of the law doing anything about the stalker are slim to none even if you are a perfect victim.
I would change this to asking if it has happened, I'd bet it has happened to far more females in one's life than people realize. But since it hasn't (or maybe it has) escalated to violence people don't think much of it.
I unsuccessfully told a couple people before about a guy that was harassing me in a similar fashion, who 'coincidentally' knew where my parents lived and they were having a rash of break-ins and thefts at that same time. I had the misfortune of leaving my parents house while he was walking by far from anywhere he was known to stay. My place was in a large apt building and would not have been an easy target except for waiting for and watching me get home, usually weekends around 2-3am.
The guy (who was living on other peoples couches) would start showing up in mutual social spaces with new things at that time, clothes & gear etc. He ended up doing far worse to my car and I was getting the feeling he was tracking it since he seemed to know where I was. I slowly avoided going to the social spaces, in return he spread malicious lies about me (which I learned of later after much confusion) causing acquaintances to start ignoring me, to being outright rude without explanation. I no longer saw the space as a social outlet. I told a close friend of mine who dismissed it as me being paranoid. So I told a therapist who question if maybe I had other stressors that would make me not see things clearly. A little while later, I ran into one of the people I would talk to on occasion in that space and he asked me about the rumors, I had no idea what he was talking about. I respect the hell out of him for being brave enough to ask me about it, unlike others who stopped talking to me or became actively rude. My last update about the people there was that he had a falling out with my harasser and his group. They were friends.
How did it end? Haven't seen or heard from the harasser in awhile, I don't know why he stopped, but I know it stopped shortly after I received my concealed carry license and started carrying. This wasn't a big step for me since I've shot guns all my life. I never wanted to keep guns in my city apt. This is really not an option for most women (or people outside the US), I'm quite confident with all manner of firearms and have no issues with the thought of lethally defending myself. That is not true for many females.
Maybe obvious, but uh: don’t fucking do this! I get it, I'm an older brother, I would wanna go ballistic too. But the fact that these guys skipped over "notify the police" and went straight to "seek out in-person confrontation" is insane! Stalkers are not people in their right mind. Staking out and planning to “citizen’s arrest”(???) someone who has repeatedly visited late at night to threaten and harass is NOT SAFE…
Maybe obvious, but uh: don’t fucking do this! I get it, I'm an older brother, I would wanna go ballistic too. But the fact that these guys skipped over "notify the police" and went straight to "seek out in-person confrontation" is insane! Stalkers are not people in their right mind. Staking out and planning to “citizen’s arrest”(???) someone who has repeatedly visited late at night to threaten and harass is NOT SAFE…
Those brothers are lucky this stalker was so meek. Things could have easily ended horribly.
Well it could also ended horribly in a different way if they didn't act.
"Just call the police and sit back and wait for them to deal with it" is a response of someone who hasn't dealt with the criminal justice system, or never talked to women about the BS they put up with.
Maybe obvious, but uh: don’t fucking do this! I get it, I'm an older brother, I would wanna go ballistic too. But the fact that these guys skipped over "notify the police" and went straight to "seek out in-person confrontation" is insane! Stalkers are not people in their right mind. Staking out and planning to “citizen’s arrest”(???) someone who has repeatedly visited late at night to threaten and harass is NOT SAFE…
I thought this too. But you can feel incredibly powerless if all you do is “let the police handle it.” Even in this instance, nothing would have come of it had they not traced the guy. Prosecution of crime happens after a crime is committed. Cops can’t do much if you’re worried someone will harm you or a loved one. Even if stalking is illegal, cops won’t / can’t feasibly spend the resources investigating and punishin…
Notify the cops. Track the guy down. Go to the station and request someone come out with you. This takes cops off the desk, which they’re rarely against unless you’re a nutter.
Maybe obvious, but uh: don’t fucking do this! I get it, I'm an older brother, I would wanna go ballistic too. But the fact that these guys skipped over "notify the police" and went straight to "seek out in-person confrontation" is insane! Stalkers are not people in their right mind. Staking out and planning to “citizen’s arrest”(???) someone who has repeatedly visited late at night to threaten and harass is NOT SAFE…
Taking matters into your own hands is often the only way of dealing with it -albeit there are safer ways of going about it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought this too. But you can feel incredibly powerless if all you do is “let the police handle it.” Even in this instance, nothing would have come of it had they not traced the guy. Prosecution of crime happens after a crime is committed. Cops can’t do much if you’re worried someone will harm you or a loved one. Even if stalking is illegal, cops won’t / can’t feasibly spend the resources investigating and punishin…
Yeah, but like... they didn't even "let the police handle it." They just went straight to "late-night stakeout." > Cops can’t do much if you’re worried someone will harm you or a loved one. You're right, and that would be a scary situation... if they didn't have more than enough evidence for the police to get involved. Repeated, late-night visits to leave threatening messages would be plenty for a restraining order i…
Car chase & citizens arrest is where we can argue lines were crossed, sure.
But, the cops were not going to do a multi-night, multi-hour, multi-man surveillance operation to catch the guy in the act.
At the very least, the brothers needed to do this to collect evidence about who the guy was, and hand that over to the cops. Or contact him by phone/social media to let him know they know who he is and what he has been doing.