Harassment is a very serious allegation to claim. We often hear things like “I know I am being harassed and followed”. For us, there are many follow-up questions after this statement. Our first two questions are always, how are they harassing you, and are they demanding something or threatening you? When the answer to the latter is in the affirmative, that is serious. If the answer is something else, we must probe a bit. If a person is being threatened and or someone is demanding something, the police should be notified.
Obtaining Physical Evidence
You will likely have to try and get a name, address, and contact number of the assailant to provide law enforcement, but being threatened is serious. If you believe someone or multiple people are following you, or someone is observing in or around your home, in some matter or fashion, you will have to prove that, and the best way is a camera system inside and outside your residence. Camera systems for homes are quite low cost and come from several manufacturers: Ring, Simplisafe, ADT, Blink, Defender. There are dash cameras that can be placed in your vehicle that are motion activated, and those are cost efficient these days, coming from companies like, Thinkware, Nexar, Vantrue, Kenwood, Rove, and many more. We often hear: “I have tried that, and someone is messing with the Wi-Fi and network or that those are installed, and nothing is on them”. We then suggest using standalone cameras in the home that are battery or electric powered, something that do not use Wi-Fi, but are motion activated, like a USB charger that has a camera, a smoke/carbon monoxide detector that has a built-in camera, and more. These are also inexpensive ideas.
The idea here is to put up cameras to record who is following you, harassing you, entering your home, etc. Being able to get video evidence of the individual and their license plate information is essential for further investigation. At that point there are folks that can conduct surveillance to ascertain the identity of the individual or individuals executing the harassment.
Call on Professionals to Help
If you believe someone is using chemicals in your home, you might consider having a professional that deals in those areas, likely I specialized contractor, come out and do testing. If you are dealing with noise issues, recording the noise and getting decibel readings will be helpful to prove your case when filing a complaint with law enforcement.
In the end, trying to prove harassment is a highly difficult enterprise, as you need to prove with exact specificity the harassment, and that means video, photo, audio, names, dates, addresses, etc., to move your complaint forward. Again, just “knowing” you are being harassed or followed is likely not enough without concrete evidence of the illegal behavior.
For example, there was a case where a person sent very specific email threats, repeatedly, of how they were going to "murder" people at a company, and the local law enforcement agency did not put much stock in the threat. The company provided the name of the individual, the address, the emails that were highly graphic and specific, and their work history (they were experts with weapons), with which the police department took a report and did not follow-up with the company. It took several calls to local PD before the FBI got involved. The point here is that if a local respected company has to battle to get law enforcement to move on harassment, think of how difficult it might be for an individual. Make sure you are equipped with all sorts of facts and proof, it will help move your case forward.
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