WATCHER/STALKER

(Most of my posts are light-hearted. Not this one.)

Years ago a new couple moved to our neighborhood. Let's call them Brady and Betty, not their real names. Betty was a devout, well-liked member of a local conservative church. She had a brother who struggled with addiction. She came from a close family, and they had done everything they could to help their brother. But they knew they were losing him.

Brady exploited their grief. He used it as an excuse to form a sort of wildcat, no-rules Watch Group. Betty would galvanize church members to take part. Betty's motives were innocent. Her only fault was that she trusted her husband.

Since the peaceful, woodsy neighborhood had always been crime-free and drug-free, we longtime residents weren't sure what they would find to watch. We were naively #MidwestNice.  Also,  watch groups were in their honeymoon period. It hadn't occurred to anyone yet that they were only as healthy as their individual members.

Brady was a frustrated bully who'd never had a chance to abuse a bit of power and get away with it. He began having the time of his life. He swaggered around the neighborhood, securing the perimeters. He showed strange interest in following the young. He, a male stranger, offered his personal protection to little teenagers. He followed women who were biking or jogging. He frequently took pictures of them with his camera phone. Did anyone call the cops? Nope. In those days you were supposed to ignore a sleaze. He frequently said he was "keeping an eye on things." He sure was. He was spotted cropping up on people's lawns in the middle of the night, peering through bathroom and bedroom windows. The churchy ladies were aware of this, but decided that Brady was just a little over-zealous.

The police had a Confidential Tipster (anonymous) phone line. Brady encouraged his buddies and his wife's  friends to "report" neighbors who seemed eccentric, or different, or whom they just had never liked. He himself reported women he'd pursued, unknown to his wife, who rejected him. He was unaware that the police do not like being treated like fools. And they don't forgive.

Some of the more troubled people in the area copied him. A teenage pothead harassed married women. His mother was told, and refused to believe her darling baby boy could ever have done anything naughty. "Good luck provin' it," she sneered, ambling away. She never forgave his victims for daring to speak up.

A person who was infatuated with a policewoman fluffed up the #NonCase as an excuse to stay in touch. 

A very ancient, very demented church member, who went to Mass every day, would stand on the sidewalk after this holy hour and shriek obscenities at her "enemies." 

Praised by church ladies,  hopped up on delusions of power, Mister Felonious Creep went a little crazy. He bragged that he'd used a radio scanner to invade privacy, hacked email accounts, forged messages,  installed tracking devices in cars. He was spotted a hundred miles from the city, driving up and down a dead end road, having followed a resident who was visiting relatives. (The baffled resident took pictures of him, and has saved them.) Nasty gossip swirled around him. His acquaintances said that Brady was an expert Peeping Tom who captured, and shared, intimate images of couples in the neighborhood: old, young, gay, straight, but  always without their knowledge or permission. Allegedly the dude had been all but hanging off rain gutters with a video camera dangling from his butt. This, like several other things he did,  is a felony.

 This was the last straw. Even the conservative church ladies were shocked. Finally, residents discussed taking legal action. Unsurprisingly, within a week, Brady and his wife moved away. He may have been a nut, but he was smart enough to stay gone.

Later, Brady was further exposed by something he could never have predicted: the rise of the internet. Suddenly, anyone who could read could look up personal histories, and many did. It turned out that the people Brady had targeted had never been in trouble in their lives.  Neither had their friends or relatives.  Not then, not now, not ever.

Brady, however, and some of his followers, had very interesting histories. And they became more spicy the deeper you searched.