How we turned the tables to catch my sister’s Bumble stalker

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

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.

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

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.

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.

If only the police we pay for were held to the same standards as other citizens.

>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

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.

> 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.

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.

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"

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.

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.

"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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

Indeed the same though crossed our minds (as I write in the article) that it is unlikely to be his first offence.

We actually did not want to humiliate him, and believe me we had the opportunity, because we did not want to "push him over the edge". I kinda hope he has kept his job so he can try to get help and stop himself doing this again.

Social skills are complicated and many people have autism. It’s not an excuse, it’s an explanation for why some people are like this.

I feel like a lot of these situations can be avoided with some simple, hard rules: primarily a) no means no when it comes to anything flirting, and b) don’t become obsessed with any one person at least until you’re dating*.

There’s a lot of nuance in social communication, but I really don’t see a case when you should break any of these hard rules. So many instances of serious harassment come down to breaking one or all of them. Idk how but the world would be much better if we could somehow just convince people to never, ever break them, and even if they are already broken, to just stop.

* There’s also c) stop doing something “romantic” or “social” if you notice it makes others uncomfortable. But I suspect some people just can’t notice discomfort. The key words are “romantic” or “social” (and for a it is “flirting”) because sometimes you have to boss people around and say things which make them uncomfortable, like that they need to get out of the way or their job performance needs to improve, but you should never be making people awkward or uncomfortable if you are “just chatting”; and you will never get a girlfriend or boyfriend by scaring or pressuring them. Well, maybe you will if they’re not very smart, but that’s morally wrong, or if you’re high-profile or in Iraq, but you’re not and that’s also morally wrong. Like I said, nuance

> There is a belief that if they are just persistent enough, their target will see their attempts as affection and fall head over heals for them.

Basically, the plot of every '80s and '90s Romantic Comedy. Entertainment of that decade left entire generations with warped views of courting and consent!

> There is a belief that if they are just persistent enough, their target will see their attempts as affection and fall head over heals for them.

Depends on the kind of stalker. I think you get these delusional obsessive people, but you also get abusive exes who stalk their ex to keep them from moving on or try to scare and intimidate and sometimes assault or kill their new partners.

> Would this have happened if the person had access to excellent therapy, medication, and support?

Many of them would learn how to better conceal their behaviors and get away with what they're doing.

It's the same reason that traditional therapy is detrimental when it comes to people with NPD, abusers, anti-social disorders, etc: they just learn how to weaponize earnest therapists along with what they learn in therapy against their victims.

People have different values and desires. That you cannot imagine doing something without being mentally ill doesn’t mean others can’t. The world is much more diverse than the upper middle class of early 21st century Anglophone progressive culture.

I do think some stalking cases can be explained by conduct disorders, where people are significantly impaired to the extent that they aren't capable of understanding or controlling antisocial behavior.

However, I do not think the vast majority of stalkers are impaired in that way. If you're so impaired that you're stalking others, the rest of your life will also be a shitshow because of your impairment. Holding down a job, maintaining friendly and familial relationships, securing housing, staying out of prison, etc are going to be out of reach for people who are genuinely that impaired.

The vast majority of people who abuse and stalk their love interests are not that impaired. They're able to have real careers and relationships that would otherwise be prevented from real impairment. These people don't stalk or abuse other people in their lives, just the people they believe they're entitled to stalk and abuse. They are not impaired, they are selective about their actions and successfully compartmentalize those behaviors in ways that prevent them from negatively affecting the rest of their lives. That shows planning, intent and control, not impairment from illness.

Are you saying that there are people that just go around, telling lies? On my Internet?

> He can't control himself

I think the thing that would shock many people is that abusers have often adopted methods of harm and subjugation that they internalized and came to consider normal, justified, and correct. They're executing from a place of intent and necessity, not chaos. They witness themselves doing it from a wildly different perspective than those around them would, and they may think the worst thing they do is get "a little heavy handed" or something. They might say that perhaps they got too loud or angry, but whatever they did was close enough to in line with what was necessitated by their target's bad behaviour.

It could range from keeping a partner "in line" with passive aggressive ridicule, physical violence, abject control (denying access to car keys, no going out past 7pm, can't eat x amount of food, etc), to being so relentlessly discouraging and belittling that the partner feels helpless and trapped. No matter what it is they're doing, they whole-heartedly believe it's deserved and they're operating with as much control as anyone typically has.

When we witness their behaviour we see a monster. And yet they're going about their work as though they are the one being inconvenienced by their incompetent/immoral/stupid/whatever partner.

Many of these people would never dream of kicking their dog or something but they've completely normalized verbally and/or physically abusing people they have intimate relationships with. What would leave you absolutely mortified with yourself is simply necessary to these people.

This is often why it's best to end these relationships. Someone who has normalized abuse could change, but there is a very good chance that you shouldn't wait to find out.

I just wanted to second the reading recommendation. Recently started reading it and wow, it is good.

On Bancroft's site, he has a couple of interesting articles about angry men who take issue with his book.

> The most common rant goes something like this: “The way Lundy describes abuse in Why Does He Do That?, any man can be labeled an abuser. He takes normal reactions to frustration and anger and throws them in with violence and threats, as if they’re all the same. If men say anything other than ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to women, he paints them as evil. Because of ideas like Lundy’s, women in droves are labeling their partners ‘abusers’ and dumping the relationship, instead of responsibly working out issues and honoring the vows they made. And because of this children are growing up in broken homes.” (Etc., etc.)

> This tirade is super revealing, primarily for one reason: the dozens of examples of male behavior that I give in Why Does He Do That? are all severe. They illustrate men being over-the-top complete assholes. There is nothing subtle about the stories I use. I’m not discussing little nuances that, say, someone might take the wrong way; that would be a different book altogether. Mine was about severe control, degradation, destroying the woman’s relationships, making her feel like everything is her fault, and on and on and on.

> So what does it mean when a man reads those stories and considers them to be normal behaviors, ones that I’m unfairly labeling abusive? It means he considers those behaviors normal. It means he believes a woman has the responsibility to stick around for more of that kind of treatment, that she owes it to him. And it means he thinks he has the right to behave that way.

> In other words, abusiveness is driven almost entirely by a man’s belief that controlling and punishing a woman is justifiable, and that his behavior is normal and can be excused.

> And he proves it by his reactions to the stories in my books. I’m not calling him abusive because he disagrees with me; I’m doing so because of the values he reveals when he complains that my (very serious) examples are too mild to be considered abuse. [0]

0 - https://lundybancroft.com/mens-angry-messages-to-me/

1 - https://lundybancroft.com/mens-angry-messages-to-me-part-2/

Wow, thank you for your honesty (especially on a site where you can't delete comments).

thank you for the insight.

thanks for posting this insight, I would add that there are positive feedback loops from some parts of your behavior and would also counter the brother's conclusion that "sending an additional message never works"

in these kinds of threads, everyone is already primed to the worst case toxic scenario, or some other uncollaborative toxic scenario, specifically from the idea of the lowest denominator man harassing women

the reality is never so rigid

many dating profiles advertise their instagram, many times that is just a vanity project to gain followers, many times sending a message on Instagram or some other way to get noticed on Instagram can lead to agreed upon in person interaction such as dates and hookups, many times sending a message is fruitless because that person gets so much attention and their inbox is not useful, or because that person just hasn't checked their messages yet

I have absolutely had one night stands with someone I saw on a dating app, never attempted to match with, messaged them on Instagram and told them I saw them on the dating app, and went out the same day.

I've done that with women that I never even mentioned that I saw them on a dating app first. Beautiful people. The proverbial "thirst traps".

Sometimes we never even follow each other on the social media site. Just all DMs.

I've had flings and relationships with people that only reply sporadically. Or who give one word responses but are completely talkative in person. Or who apologize about not responding often because they are actually busy people who aren't trying to send a hint at all.

and the most important part of this? I have dozens of these low effort threads out there. For every one where its supposed to be interpreted as "a woman changing her behavior to be offstandish because they can't tell which man is a creep" there is "a woman thats not trying to send a hint at all collaboratively communicating like everyone else, good thing you tried again"

I would wager that most people do not keep track of whether they sent one girl 4+ unreplied messages in a row over any time period and its freaking her out, versus the conversation that will be replied to eventually. I try to be cognizant of "how it looks" no different than trying to be cognizant of how walking past a playground on the walking trail on the way to the grocery store looks. But changing my behavior because people can't tell which guys are going to go full stalker mode and assault people? Unlikely.

It's the kind of thing you don't think about until something happens, and when it does it's too late.

Sadly, if someone wants to find information there is enough online without needing to help them with social media. My parents have never had a social media account and I deleted mine years before I had an issue with someone who found out not only where I lived but my parents as well. (and having 20+ years in the software industry, I'm aware of how things work). Doing a simple search isn't that difficult to get the addresses. Though, it was probably a tracking device and considering the later disabling of important drive functions that my long time mechanic had no answer for except to not charge me hours of work looking at it and telling me to just get what I could for it, I lean towards tracking device. Staying off social media helps, but when someone wants to harass another, I think not being easily online just made it more fun for him. At least I would find the challenge more gratifying.

Haha, the funny thing is that the service isn’t even storing that piece of data – the user is! So GDPR, etc. should be covered.

Although, if the user finds out about the mechanism they can just delete the entry from their keychain.

>One approach on iOS is to store unique identifier in the “Keychain” (or iCloud itself) which is data kept in the cloud tied to a user’s Apple ID account

Wouldn't it be obviously visible because you can see the app/file on icloud?

Also, I'm pretty sure the keychain idea is banned by app store guidelines.

exactly - under GDPR it would be fine to retain specific data for a limited period of time to prevent fraud (which is what this is, really).

Also, this type of user is not making deletion requests - they are deleting and then immediately reinstalling the app to appear "fresh".

What is the legal reason in this case? Ban evasion on a social media app doesn't sound illegal.

Good take, thank you.

In my opinion, fraud prevention is, of all reasons to retain data, the least important. This example of dating app behaviour is easily detected with simple heuristics, and leads to far more important information than fraud could ever be.

If you living in EU and this is an Apple Police App - you should, IMO.

There are in theory no plea deals in the UK. The police are not allowed to make promises in return for a guilty plea.

The accused may have a reasonable expectation that they'll receive a reduced sentence from the judge in exchange for cooperating with the police; but there are no deals. The prosecutors cannot bind the judge.

You're not allowed to harass people. With it being targeted, that's what this is. Also, you JUST acknowledged that these sorts of incidents have a history of escalating.

I have no idea why you’re trying so hard to defend a stalker throughout this thread.

He was driving a considerable distance, on repeated occasions, while concealing his appearance, to harass someone. That’s not “snowflake” ethics - it’s wrong, full stop

It doesn’t matter how he chose to harass them, or whether the level of property damage was beyond a line you consider unacceptable.

There is a belief pervading society that criminals are not responsible for their own actions, that other things or people are responsible.

One reason would be because they screeched their tires out of a parking lot in a rush to capture him, possibly to beat and murder him... from his perspective.

If they caused a guy to flee for his life (whatever the guy's crime) and in the process he hit and killed somebody, then you can bet a judge would be interested in the details.

Yes. Regardless of how meek or not, a lot of these kinds of creeps are only big scary tough guys until confronted by other males for their actions.

"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.

Sounds like Minority Report. Great movie btw.

Considering modern laws governing construction sites do not allow workers to carry anything over 20lb and that also in strict limited time, I would rather say an average gym member exercising 3 times a week would be a tougher mate.

Not to mention criminals and crazy people do carry guns. The whole thing might as well ended with "three 6 feet-tall construction workers with black belts in jujitsu ended up dead shot by a 140 pounds stalker with semi-automatic gun"

I think we prefer "restrained" to "meek" ;)

I am sure he didn't mean it in a bad way, but that doesn't mean that emphasis on gender like that isn't problematic. I specifically am referencing the multiple spots where it is highly implied that the brothers were there to rescue her and that she was completely naive otherwise and would have been helpless without them. The fact that they were in the business of online security was what specifically helped her, and the macho 'let's catch him!' antics hurt more than helped, and were generally dumb (which they acknowledge).

The takeaway should have been 'she was luck to have people close to her that knew how to dox people online' and not 'she had three brothers who recklessly camp out at night in order to get into high speed pursuits.'