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 punishing stalkers. Even prosecuting sexual assault (ie. after a serious crime has been committed) is extremely difficult.

What actually effective steps can you take if someone is harassing a female in your life? Speaking from personal experience, the lip service of “cops are there to protect you” is inadequate. It didn’t provide any safety, and I can’t see how, structurally, it even could.

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 in the U.S., or at the very least to spur further police investigation.

> What actually effective steps can you take if someone is harassing a female in your life?

In this case, her brothers could have taken turns driving home from work with her, walking her to her car, sleeping over at her place, while they waited for police to proceed with investigation. They could have helped her get connected with a self-defense course, or bought her mace (depending on legality).

Stalkers/harassers can make people feel extremely helpless, and yes, there are a lot of really horrible situations where cops are useless despite an obvious threat.

This... is not one of those situations.

As per the article, they definitely did call the police beforehand. Clearly the police had taken little, if any, action. It's hidden, but it's there: "my sister had already had a couple of police visits about the previous incidents".

What did they do besides doxing him and confronting him online that helped? None of their 'let's catch him' antics were helpful and were actually stupid.

They got a vehicle identified and a confession leading to an arrest. Did we read the same article?

The confession was online, and they already had the vehicle ID (written down initially and then confirmed on camera). Don't be patronizing please. Hiding out in the car did nothing that they couldn't have done with cameras, without risking violent confrontation and a high speed chase.

You asked "What did they do besides doxing him and confronting him online that helped?"

> The confession was online

The confession was made possible via their "antics", because he knew he'd been caught. Without the experience of being cornered and having to escape, he'd have likely ignored the message as a fishing expedition.

> they already had the vehicle ID

Getting that was part of their "antics", yes.

You are right, I should have phrased the question better. What I meant by antics was the desire to confront him physically.

Identifying people who are committing crimes against your family isn't "doxing". Or: it is, and a good illustration of the uselessness of that term.

> Repeated, late-night visits to leave threatening messages would be plenty for a restraining order in the U.S., or at the very least to spur further police investigation.

Restraining order against whom exactly? The masked man? Also, what tactical protection do you think a restraining order provides against someone with actual intent to harm?

> In this case, her brothers could have taken turns driving home from work with her, walking her to her car, sleeping over at her place, while they waited for police to proceed with investigation. They could have helped her get connected with a self-defense course, or bought her mace (depending on legality).

All good suggestions. Unfortunately, everything other than self-defense is a temporary (and likely not sustainable) countermeasure. Regarding the self-defense strategy, barring effective weapon use, the odds aren't in the target's favor given 1/ the size discrepancy (they even talk about how burly the stalker was) and 2/ the fact that the assailant has the element of surprise. It's sad that the only viable option seems to be "carry a weapon, train in martial arts, wait for an incident and hope you're able to defend against it." This is not preventative. It's reactionary.

> This... is not one of those situations.

I disagree.

Also, in "this situation", they already have camera footage of it being one guy coming on his own.

3 burly overprotective brothers vs some creepy stalker dude who shows up late at night like a coward? Those are odds that I'd totally put on the brother's side. Since the cops had already "Sorry, not much we can do"ed the sister, I'd happily be big brothering up and taking that confrontational risk.

(I'd also happily do it with barley plausibly denial "sporting equipment" in hand as well - 3 burly Scottish brothers carrying cricket bats vs one cowardly late night creepy stalker? And if ever needed I'd try on the "Why yes officer, we were all on our way back to our sister's house from a late night cricket practice when we discovered a man interfering with our sister's car!" line.)

The problem with this is trusting that the situation won't escalate enough in between the time the police are contacted and they maybe collect enough evidence to come up with charges, and that when charged the suspect would actually be held pre-trial, actually found guilty, and actually sentenced to time in jail.

The path from "call police" to "bad guy caught" to "bad guy in jail" is non-linear.

What do you think a restraining order would do, and against whom?

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.

> nothing would have come of it had they not traced the guy

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.

> unless you’re a nutter.

Or undocumented, or a member of another group for whom interactions with the police are potentially dangerous.

Or for that matter, what if you are "a nutter?" People with mental illness also get stalked, and also deserve protection. Going in person to the police station is unwise for so so many reasons for so many people.

If this approach works for you then cool, for you. It's not going to work for most of us.

These all seem like situations where you'd just risk making things go EVEN WORSE by getting directly involved in a confrontation that might result in a police response to a violent situation...

The alternative is also potentially worse: being in a violent situation that the stalker controls.

Man I wish I lived in your world. That said we have studies that show police rarely actually do crime-related work.

Where do you live? In SF, last time I tried to get the cops to come out of their desk (to arrest a bike thief who was selling my stolen bike literally 3 blocks away from the station), they told me that they couldn't do it. One of the excuses they used was that it was too far: if I could get the thief to enter the police station then they would help me.

SFPD is notoriously, maliciously useless. It's a political tactic that they've used to wring more funding, less oversight and fancy surveillance gadgets from the city. The previous DA had to rent a U-Haul himself to seize stolen property from a shady business[1] that was involved in organized car breakins. In 1975 they set a bomb off on the mayor's lawn to get him to concede to their strike demands[2].

They're not there to help you, little bike owner. They're there to ensure the value extraction and capital accumulation machine stays lubricated.

1. https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/boudin-forced-to-rent-u-...

2. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=163878616863437...

>This takes cops off the desk, which they’re rarely against unless you’re a nutter.

Is this something you have actual experience with? Because it doesn't sound plausible to me. Of course, I don't know where you live so it could be different there.

Have you tried? I've seen women friends of mine try this more than once. Go through lot of effort to collect evidence and all the police will do is take your statement, promise that they will "look into it", and then promptly ignore you.

The practical mechanisms to handle stalking like this are restraining orders and trespassing laws. Trespassing is the easier of the two to utilize. If it's your land, you can tell the police who's allowed on it. Once either of those things has been set up, the police can arrest the offender the next time he shows up.

Beyond that, move somewhere with a strong castle doctrine, where you can own a firearm.

This isn't a new problem for societies and there are good solutions, which have been eroded over time. If you can't shoot intruders in your house without consequence, you are living in a failing state. If the police can't be relied upon to keep repeat offenders away from you and your property, you are living in a failing state.

>> If you can't shoot intruders in your house without consequence, you are living in a failing state.

What nonsense. I live in Japan, where it is practically impossible to obtain a firearm. The same would be true for the OP in Scotland. Neither should be considered a failing state except under your ridiculous definition.

Cowardice: the post. Cops won’t care or do anything near me. Dangerous confrontation > dead/raped sister any day of the week.

Right but the point is you at least need to notfiy them first and give them the chance to do something. If you're unsatified with what they've done, or lack thereof, then sure.

"Hello, 911? I'd like to report a stalker. If you don't handle it in 30 minutes or less, I will attack. I woke up today and chose violence..."

> or less, I will attack.

  Copy written lyrics so they can't be stolen
  If they are, Snap! Don't need the police
  To try to save them, your voice will cease
  So please, stay off my back
  Or I will attack, and you don't want that

The point isn't a point at all, since their sister had already notified the police and given them a chance to do something. Read the article: "My sister had already had a couple of police visits about the previous incidents."

Who said those are the only two choices available? False dichotomy

Hi, Where I live the police won't get seriously involved unless someone is injured or dead. I prefer not to wait that long.

I’m not sure if this is a regional thing; police are like this just about everywhere. In my region, most of the people in my community have all stopped calling the emergency services line to report crimes in progress because the dispatch yells and screams and berates the callers. There’s a Facebook group for my local town with dozens of people who say they don’t call anymore because of this. At some point, the police transitioned from preventing and fighting crime to arguing in court that they don’t have the duty to protect. Not sure how it happened or why, but it’s making things worse. Many people no longer see the police as part of the local community but as an organized gang that terrorizes people for small infractions while ignoring major crimes in progress. No amount of patriotism, flag waving, or bumper stickers can change this perception.

Where is this awful place? It sounds like it's in the US; can you say which state at least?

No police force in the US has a duty to protect. See: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=910846825412517...

> Not sure how it happened or why

Obviously police are a diverse group, but certainly no white male police officer in his right mind would risk a violent encounter with a minority suspect in today’s political environment. If I were a cop, I’d get another job ASAP and focus on paperwork until I found one.

That's about the same almost anywhere in the world, the above user probably has no experience being stalked, despite the assertive phrasing. Also not to turn this into an identity debate but if HN had significantly more female users one of the highest upvoted comments wouldn't be just call the police bro.

The problem is the cops tend not to give a shit.

I understand that. But you cannot assume they won't help. These guys didn't even try contacting the police before hatching a late-night scheme.

For what it's worth, in my (regrettably several) experiences with stalkers/harassers, this situation would have been taken extremely seriously.

"Masked guy repeatedly visits at night to write threatening messages on car of single woman living alone" is... about as explicit as you can get.

Except they did:

>Now it was time to call 999. My sister had already had a couple of police visits about the previous incidents, so they knew there was a problem linked to her flat and came round pretty quickly.

Thank you.

Please stop repeating this falsehood. "My sister had already had a couple of police visits about the previous incidents."

Exactly.

I know this story is in the UK, but at least in the US you absolutely should assume they will not help, and depending on the circumstances will make the situation even worse. They have no duty to do anything to help, and no consequences if they don't.

> "Masked guy repeatedly visits at night to write threatening messages on car of single woman living alone" is... about as explicit as you can get.

Or alternatively its an invitation for a police officer or a department to suddenly need to do a lot of work that they could just...not do. No skin off their back if someone is being harassed or stalked, and if something worse happens, they can investigate then. Why spend the resources now after all?

That doesn't seem to be the case in this story

> my sister updated the police on our significant evidence haul and the police agreed that they had enough to at least arrest him and question him

There’s no evidence the cops would have acted on just a complaint. Anecdotally, I know several people who’ve struggled to get the cops to take stalking seriously.

Why would they? They get bombarded with people them to f-over or harass someone they got beef with all the time. And most of those sob stories they get told have two sides to them. The false positive ratio is too high to be worth taking these complaints seriously let alone at face value.

Do you have sources about false positive ratios of stalking, vandalism, etc? My understanding is that sexually-oriented crimes actually have a very low rate of false accusations, but I didn't look into it deeply and I only heard of it like 5+ years ago so maybe something's changed? Let me know if you have updated data.

Its an information/risk asymmetry problem too right.

For an individual its better to be safe than sorry on something like a stalking incident.

For the cops dealing with a plethora of complaints, on average, most of these resolve to nothing..

Further, these complaints often come with unspecific information thus requiring some amount of surveillance, some of which is easier for the victim to do (put cameras up your own property) than they are able to do legally, especially without a warrant.

Further, with some information in-hand from surveillance, the victim also has access to all their own social media/etc accounts that you can try and make connections between whatever information you collect.

Most people are probably not going to be be OK with "sure we can help you, but we need to put cameras on your property, car and permission to login to all your social media accounts / email / texts, is that ok?"

Obviously this is not ideal, but the vast majority of cops are not detectives. They aren't sending out their best to every seemingly minor call.

I had a friend involved in a domestic incident and when the cops showed up, because she had fought back enough, they both showed evidence of a struggle, and the guy lied about incident. So the cops spent less than an hour on site, shrugged their shoulders and dragged them both off to lockup to go sort it out with a judge in the morning.

One alternative is maybe she didn't fight back and the cops would have seen only marks on her neck and took only him away, maybe. The other alternative is, she didn't fight back, and he choked her to death.

It's often better to fight back than to let yourself get killed while waiting for law enforcement, but there's also a risk that whatever contact with law enforcement you make will not go precisely your way, immediately, without side effects.

I agree.

However it is worth noting that the sister had been to the police quite a bit by the sounds of it.

"Now it was time to call 999. My sister had already had a couple of police visits about the previous incidents, so they knew there was a problem linked to her flat and came round pretty quickly."

Citizens Arrests are very dangerous and pretty much never worth the risk. Even ignoring the many physical dangers of such an act, if the person “arrested” doesn’t get convicted (also pretty sure it has to be a felony conviction, at least here in MA, though IANAL), it opens you up to a false arrest, or possibly a false imprisonment, charge.

If only actual cops were held to the same standards as other citizens.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. The seems pretty reasonable to me.

>Even ignoring the many physical dangers of such an act, if the person “arrested” doesn’t get convicted (also pretty sure it has to be a felony conviction, at least here in MA, though IANAL), it opens you up to a false arrest, or possibly a false imprisonment, charge.

In England and Wales you merely need a reasonable belief, the person not being convicted does not automatically open you up to trouble any more than it would open up a police officer to trouble.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/60/section/24A

"Collect evidence and get the authorities involved!" is excellent advice.

Though if other options were exhausted, I'd be more prepared to "give it a go" in the UK than in the US. Stricter gun laws mean you're unlikely to be confronted with a firearm, and if outnumbered and tempers are kept at bay the person would be more likely to run or surrender. Think I would have had more than two people on my side.

So you confront someone you think is a criminal with a group of men and get into a brawl. How much time are you willing to spend in jail?

Even if the gent is a stalker and you are right - you still instigated a brawl! You still assaulted (or more) someone.

If your thought process is "ah but he won't have a gun! My lads and me will really have an easy time now!" that may be a sign you are doing something unwise.

And what if he does have a knife or improvised weapon? Are you looking forward to explaining to your buds wife why he's room temp in the morgue over a stalker?

> you still instigated a brawl!

Why go in with an assumption that violence is going to occur? That's a recipe for trouble. You would have to pick your friends carefully, so none of them loose their cool. If there is going to be violence or any contact, let the stalker initiate it.

I'm not arguing that it would be risk free or a lark. It's a case of accepting the risks and being happy that the likely outcome would justify the risks.

If you don't believe violence is going to occur, why not go alone?

The point of going with a group of friends is to make it clear to the person you are implicitly threatening that if there is a fight they will lose. The more unbalanced the forces on each side the less likely the weaker side is to initiate violence.

I agree, which brings me back to my original point - why are you seeking out violence via street brawl and are you ready when you or your buddies goes to the morgue or the jail?

These people use the implicit threat of violence to get someone to stop doing a thing they don’t want to continue. They believe that the chance of going to the morgue is very low and the chance of going to jail is also extremely low. So they do it because they think the expected benefits outweigh the expected costs. They would be less likely to do so if they lived in a country where most crime is punished and reports of crime are generally investigated. That’s not Scotland though.

While I do agree that what they did is risky, the article does mention that the police had already been notified after previous incidents. Of course if they failed to alert the police after they had the video evidence of the same guy vandalizing the car night after night then I will fully agree complete idiots, otherwise I can sympathize with their desire to go above and beyond to help their sister.

"Complete idiots"might be a slight exaggeration, but hey no offence taken.

iirc they knew we had video, but the video of the car vandalism was never going to be enough to do anything. They had not seen that specific video. In the end it was only a small part of the evidence package.

Thanks for the response. Just to clarify, the 'complete idiots' comment was only applicable in the event you had completely ignored the police while gathering the evidence. Since you seemed to have been in contact with them and realized they were not going to act I honestly applaud you and brother for taking steps to ensure your sister doesn't end up as a 'statistic' as they say.

Possibly different in Scotland? They mention at least making an effort to figure out the laws that apply to them.

The part that jumped out was,

> we get ready to make a “citizen’s arrest”

That is so stupid. They are very lucky they didn't get the chance to try that.

it's Scotland. Making a citizen's arrest is not so crazy.

Or you could try being a man and dealing with it yourself.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but the police are not your guardians or protectors. They're NOT going to fix issues like a stalker.

People who refuse to defend themselves or their loved ones deserve everything coming to them.

>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!

Unless you have independently evidence (that can be independently verified) of a better than misdemeanor crime police almost certainly aren't gonna do squat other than put you on a list of "people with motive" to check up on when the dude you're after gets shwacked by someone else he's wronged.

Note: Scotland. Different rules.

It is hilarious that you think the police would give a shit.

We have no way of knowing if they would have given a shit, because they literally didn't even try before planning a late-night stakeout.

Yeah, cops can be really shitty about domestic violence and harassment.

But, uh, as opening statements go, it's hard to do much stronger than:

"Hello officer! I have video evidence of masked guy repeatedly visiting at night to write threatening messages on the car of a woman living alone"

From the article: "Now it was time to call 999. My sister had already had a couple of police visits about the previous incidents, so they knew there was a problem linked to her flat and came round pretty quickly."

You call the police a few times in your life and learn they are useless. Then you either experience or hear about times when calling them ended worse for the caller than if they'd just never bothered at all.

Maybe this isn't true for where you live, your income bracket, or your skin tone, but it is definitely true for a lot of people.

The post indicates they had previously notified the police.

"My sister had already had a couple of police visits about the previous incidents, so they knew there was a problem linked to her flat and came round pretty quickly."

Trying to confront chase the perp was indeed a dumb idea. Though if you read the article they appear to have made multiple reports in the past. Thing is with police reports like this is by the time they arrive they only "see" vandalism which is all they can put in their report. Anything else you tell them is taken with a grain of salt, they arent psychics. In order for them to become actively involved they need to see the crime in progress or be presented with solid evidence. In the latter case you need to hire a private detective or DiY which is what they chose to do here.

Also from a legal standpoint, if you end up in court trying to get a restraining order or by pressing charges, it's going to look awful if you did something like this.

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.

Is there a prospective randomized controlled trial on which intervention is safest and most effective? No? Hmmm.

I do not think the article implied that this was safe in any way. Sometimes doing something unsafe is the only way to accomplish a task.

definitely get it on record with the police, but you must realise that the police will do fuck-all about it until it escalates into something much more serious, and often, it's too late at that point.

Taking matters into your own hands is often the only way of dealing with it -albeit there are safer ways of going about it.

This is only good advice in a society of law and order where crimes are prosecuted and punished appropriately. Whether that fits the UK is a matter for debate. For reasons people might believe that see the incredibly long thread linked below. There’s no Spanish reason to believe the police would have investigated and arrested a stalker just because there was copious evidence to prosecute.

> Norwich man leaves his victim with permanent facial scarring after glassing him in a nightclub row over his feet being on a seat. Ordered to pay £175 compensation with a suspended sentence edp24.co.uk/news/23243869.… via @Norfolkforever

https://twitter.com/edwest/status/1613814824013598720?s=46&t...

> Disqualified driver kills a cyclist while doing 80 in a 30mph zone, leaves him to die while he escapes, Despite ten prior convictions for 20 offences, gets less than 5 years (so will serve 2 and a half) Also banned from driving - for 5 just years

https://twitter.com/edwest/status/1616865052899909633?s=46&t...

> Last year at least 58 people were murdered by criminals let out early on probation. Many of those had been let out early for extremely violent offences express.co.uk/news/uk/172127… (*55 killers, at least one killed multiple people)

https://twitter.com/edwest/status/1614919057102209025?s=46&t...

Save your breath for telling the stalker: don't fucking do this!

Do you have experience getting the cops involved in something like this? Because from what I've read, it's at best hit or miss depending on jurisdiction and circumstance.

That's not to say that a citizen's arrest is a good idea, mind you. Just that getting the authorities involved may not be effective.

The instinct to defend yourself and your loved ones is a heuristic policy trained over millions of years. Certainly there is a good reason for this.

By the way, remember when less than a year ago 376 police officers stood around while a deranged gunman murdered 19 highschool students, serving no other purpose than to prevent anyone from entering the school and saving the students?

Nobody cares about your safety as much as you and your family do.

some of us do not like to deal with police.

Eh, the police are pretty useless. Unless the situation is obvious, easy, and very serious, don’t expect much.

Yea confronting a stalker isn’t safe, duh. I don’t know who would go into an endeavor like that expecting such. What you need to do is make sure that you aren’t inviting serious legal consequences on yourself with your plans (or that you know and accept the risks).

The police had been informed prior to the stakeout.

A citizens arrest is a well-known thing, why the ???

This isn’t America, where everyone may be yielding a firearm.

aye, exactly. I presume most of the people criticising our "citizen's arrest" idea are form the US, where I indeed would not have contemplated doing such a thing.

In Scotland I do not really have the same fear. Not sure I would do the same thing in Glasgow or London, but still, we are not idiots, we were not going to take any crazy risks but we figured the risk to us was worth it to stop the risk to our sister. We weighed the risks up.

It was buried, so you might have missed it: "My sister had already had a couple of police visits about the previous incidents." They didn't skip the police at all: the police simply weren't doing anything until they had more information.

I don't think anybody skipped "notify the police". He mentiones police was informed multiple times about incidents with a car.

They just didn't bother to do anything until the guy was served to them on a silver platter.

Even after police was given plates of the guy they said, you must be wrong, car's from Yorkshire, as if the main feature of the cars wasn't that they can move from Yorkshire to wherever.

You might be right, but most of the time authorities don't do shit.

I remember a situation where a friend (SF Bay Area) managed to identify the location of his stolen bike, police didn't care and didn't do anything.

I agree that caution is necessary, but I wouldn't be expecting much from the police.

This is highly context dependent. The police are not reliable in many (probably most) places in the world. In many places you're much better off with a direct confrontation.

Hi, this is my article. I know it's a long read, but I presume you didn't read the whole article.

We certainly didn't skip notifying the police. The whole point of the article is that we did the opposite - gathered enough evidence so that the police could do their job.

The police were never going to do a stake out like we did.

Citizen's arrest is not such a unusual thing to do. We would not have messed with him if he produced a knife.

I note that when I published this article a week or two ago, much of the feedback (mostly from Americans I think) was that they would have skipped the police and just kicked the guy in! I would say we were quite sensible overall.

Additional context for Americans: we basically don’t have guns in Britain. The most dangerous thing these guys did was nearly get run over by the stalker fleeing in his car.

It is not safe indeed, but since when we (as in "humans") started doing only safe things?

That's pretty much what they did. It's not as if they got out and attacked the guy.

Well, it certainly helps there is an effective police force where they are.

In the US, the police wouldn't have done much. Maybe issue a restraining order or three if she's lucky.

Also helps that the danger of everyone carrying murder device firearms isn't as prevalent over there.

In certain countries the person is buried in a grave and problem solved. Nobody knows about it. What's wrong with that?

Btw this whole shit looks staged.

At least she got someone to defend her. If you're a dude who can't help yourself in the same way literally nobody gives a shit about you.

Also, after reading the article: * They make a citizen's arrest with little evidence that the guy they observed the other night is the same dude as on video other than their word * The night they actually observed the guy, he didn't actually do anything wrong (even if putting on a mask is a pretty solid link) but it's still all on their word

I feel like the stalker dude is a dangerous scumbag but these vigilantee a-holes are no better; as a short gay dude I've run in with too many of these dude bro white knights who may get things right now & then but can otherwise screw up. Like dudes that assault you in a club bc they think you're harassing some chick when in actuality you're just plain not interested.