photo courtesy of Tracy Walker

Would you stand up to a bully in your neighborhood? Well, there’s one person here who’s doing just that. Tracy Walker and her neighbors have been living with a constant level of harassment from Scientology for the past several months.

However, Scientology (the neighborhood bully) makes it a habit to keep the harassment below a certain threshold, so you can’t really call the police about it without looking like a crackpot. But the individual incidents are truly annoying. And when they’re combined, the overall effect causes an unbroken stream of vexation.

Bullying the neighborhood — because they can.

For example, how would you like it if there were trucks and buses idling outside your windows, emitting exhaust fumes into your windows at all hours of the day and night?

How about construction noises early in the morning and late at night, messing with your sleep time? We know there are ordinances against that sort of thing. But the Scientology organization (I can’t in good conscience call them a church) considers itself above the law.

Complaints from the neighbors have reached an unprecedented level. Civilized conversations with Scientology officials are politely (for the most part) acknowledged. Then ignored. They just keep on doing what they’re doing, regardless of how the neighbors feel about it.

This is how they bully people in the neighborhood who would oppose them. They did it to get rid of opponents on L. Ron Hubbard Way, now they’re trying to do the same thing on Catalina, where the back entrances to their buildings are.

Things came to a head during the last heatwave, when residents had to keep their windows open to get relief from the heat. But then they had no way to block out the noise.

And I have to give Scientologists credit for high creativity in the various and sundry ways they come up with to spread their noise pollution. From their loud “conversations,” where “managers” verbally abuse the workers under their supervision, to their para-military exercises several times a day.

Tracy happened to be scantily clad in the privacy of her own home, in an attempt to beat the heat. And they made a fatal mistake when they allowed one worker to use their cherry picker vehicle to peek into her second story window.

Big mistake.

In the wake of the #metoo movement, this incident was not the kind of thing that would fall below the reportable threshold. And Tracy caught him on camera, as he was trying to get away.

In fact, she has documentation of all the incidents the neighbors have been enduring for months. Since the situation was not resolving at the local level, it escalated. Tracy set up a meeting with the field representative of our City Council member, which was held at the Northeast Station of the LAPD. I was there. So were Janet Weiland and Ken Long of Scientology’s Office of Special Affairs.

Tony Ortega has the details of the meeting on his blog, where Janet experienced at least one “Oh, shit!” moment.

However, knowing Scientology, I expect they’ll weasel out of it one way or another. Click To Tweet Even though the detective investigating the cherry picker incident wants to follow up by interviewing the fellow, that Scientology staff member may mysteriously disappear into one of their myriad locations. If you’ve been watching them for any length of time, you will have seen them sweep other criminal cases under the rug in the most imaginative ways.

I’ll go read a book now.

In the midst of all this uproar, I took a temporary refuge in a book, as usual. After Donna Grant, I got into Jayne Anne Krentz. She’s an interesting author who writes under three pen names. Her Amanda Quick persona writes historical paranormal romances. She writes futuristic paranormal romances under the name Jayne Castle. And lately I’ve seen her writing in the mystery / suspense / contemporary romance genre under her real name. All very enjoyable.

So, yeah. I’ll get through it by reading a book. And live to fight again another day.

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