No offense Durova but not all police departments in the world are the same as yours. As the victim of a serious violent crime (I was shot in the chest at point-blank range) and a former youth minister who worked in outreach in a red-light district, I've had plenty of dealings with the police and I can only say that I'm grateful that not all police departments in the world are as you have apparently experienced. Even if actual charges are not viable, there are other ways the police can help that can often have a wake-up call effect, if not for the young person but for the parent/guardian. If your police department makes complainants "look foolish" because they are inexperienced with reporting procedures then I can only sympathise with people who live in your district but that certainly isn't the case for all police departments.
On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 5:17 AM, Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote:
As someone who really did open an FBI case last year about a credible threat that arose from wiki-stuff, some of y'all need a primer on Goin' to the Cops 101.
- Their time and resources are finite.
- They don't like paperwork.
- Part of their job is to quell people who want to misuse the system for
frivolous complaints.
So you get a series of questions. Stuff like:
- Why do you consider this a threat?
- Are you really scared by that?
- Have you contacted the ISP?
- What have they done?
- Have you contacted the folks who run Wikipedia?
- What have they done?
- Why didn't you call us sooner?
And if you don't have good answers to all those questions plus records of the doors you knocked on before calling law enforcement, you'll end up looking pretty foolish. And when you think how many people who really deal with criminal stalkers have trouble getting rudimentary help from the law because they're the needle in a haystack of frivolous complaints, you may feel regret.
Grawp targeted me too. It was an annoyance. Be reasonable, people. Start up a petition to the ISP.
-Durova