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Comment by bigpeach | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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.

> 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.)

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.

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.

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.

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