



"When I find you and I will, your going to understand what it's like to be a fish out of water. God help you and your family. I tracked your IP address and I'm coming for you ...... you don't know when to stop and when you do it will be too late for you to start ever again."

Mary, Mary with shorter (yet still greasy) hair -e.

Why do you hate people so?

Do you truly despise others?

Or, perhaps just your mother?

Or, maybe...just yourself.

192.248.248.66

IP address [?]: 192.248.248.66 Copy [Whois]

IP address country: ip address flag United States

IP address state: California

IP address city: Riverside

IP address latitude: 33.940399

IP address longitude: -117.395897

ISP of this IP [?]: CITY OF RIVERSIDE

Organization: CITY OF RIVERSIDE

Local Time of this IP country: 2008-12-22 22:31









I contacted the city for an explanation as to why a harassing email written in an account impersonating me was sent out through their computer network. I was essentially told by Information Technology head, Steve Reneker to contact Yahoo about the "alleged impersonations" because the city couldn't or wouldn't even provide an explanation as to how why its IP address appeared on a header with the harassment email. The city apparently believed that the appropriate response to this situation was to have Yahoo answer to a behavior that was done on a city-owned network that it had nothing to do with. That's called passing the buck in most worlds.



So can people write harassing emails on city owned equipment or using city-administrated networks do so with impunity. Unfortunately, the answer is yes. This is a much less serious example of how that is so than that involving the above blogger but the mentality is pretty much the same. It comes from pretty much the same place. And it's not a very good place at that.



Just as it was yes, when I was harassed for two years by still-unidentified (at least to me) individuals although I bumped into one of them on another site about a month ago. The writing style, syntax, punctuation and overall flair if you can call it that, were the same that I was subjected to for month after month filled with hateful posts where he harassed me and thumbed his noses at those allegedly investigating his antics.



It was like getting hit in the face by a blast of cold air. Being among his own kind considering how he identified himself and not the "whore" or the "bitch" or maybe even the "cunt", his manners were somewhat better than how he had behaved on my site with his friends. I had pretty much put the episode of cyber stalking behind me but when I read the familiar style of writing, it all came back in a rush. Just like it did when in the autumn of 2006, I watched the only cyber harasser who had ever been identified to me by a representative of the police department, receive a civic award from the city council. Only in Riverside can an officer get slapped on the wrist for conduct unbecoming of an officer and get a civic award in the same year. But then that might not be the case at all. Maybe that happens everywhere. Maybe it's when it doesn't, that is when an exception prevails over the rule.



So I know better than most what lies ahead for this woman if she insists that she live in a world where she can blog about the issues that matter to her and keep herself and her family safe from individuals like those who threatened her via email, who may or may not be the same people who are sworn to protect and serve people. But when someone states in writing that they're coming after you, it's going to make you fearful, it's going to make you always look over your shoulder and that's part of the thrill and the power these cowards exert over others. Just like when someone "prays" that serious harm comes to you or your family, or says they are coming looking for you with their friends in blue. But what's the incentive to not engage in this behavior if you're awarded after the fact? The decision to do just that sent a pretty loud message about some of the disturbing remainders of a police culture which was supposed to be stamped out by former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer's consent decree. In some elementary ways, this agency has a long way to go even as it's been successful in other areas of reform.



It's going to make you wonder if this person, that person or that person in that squad car over there is the one who wrote somewhere that they saw you that day. That they saw you the day before and the week before that and then paint that image they took from those sightings in disgusting and intimate detail. After all, they can afford to do so in Florida and they can afford to do it here, because their privacy under state law is more important than your safety. It's their playing field after all.



So having learned the reality of how the system of self-investigation works and just how well law enforcement handles its own problems in its midst, I can only hope that this blogger receives some form of justice and feeling of safety for having the life of her and her family threatened by some coward hiding behind anonymity but unfortunately, I'll be surprised if that actually happens because in law enforcement's current state, it can't as long as it thinks the "good" that its "bad apples" do when they're not engaging in bad behavior outweighs that bad behavior that they do and anyone harmed by said bad behavior, is just acceptable collateral damage. That's a pretty good explanation, as good as any as to why a department and a city would award an officer who had committed what it called misconduct.



I also hope that she never gives up her blogging though that can be difficult in the face of threats especially if you have children. But in the end as abhorrent as this behavior can be, it's a litmus test on whether or not your blogging is having an impact though that's not much consolation when it happens to you.



Eventually, you learn to live with it. You learn to take precautions. You learn to be careful about who you trust including police officers. It's not really fair because the vast majority of them are good people who work hard to keep people safe but unfortunately, there are members in their rank who hide behind them as justification to harass. Why not? They have all the protection in the world. After all, who's going to investigate them anyway? Their former supervisor who got transferred to Internal Affairs after working in the same unit? Their drinking buddy? Their best friend? The officer whose life they saved a month before by backing them up in a dangerous situation? One or more of the above?



But it's hard reading about it when it happens to someone else. Because an attack against one blogger is really an attack against all of us who address these issues.





In this particular case involving the city-sent email, about a week later, after I blogged about the email, I received the following one from a Charter Communications ISP in Riverside. That's the first and only apology I ever received from a cyber harasser to date.













