Recently a pervert was caught on a Florida Target store surveillance camera trying to film up a woman’s skirt.
As of this posting, police are still looking for him.
“Peeping Toms” always concern me because such a crime is often a stepping stone to something much worse. John Douglas and Mark Olshaker’s excellent book Mindhunter lays out this sort of criminal escalation in a very detailed manner.
Let’s talk countermeasures.
- Trust your instincts.
- If someone gives you a bad feeling, move away from them.
- Be wary of a person’s movement that correlates to your own movement (“Being followed”)
- Notice how the perpetrator keeps following the girl?
- Keep moving if you think someone is following you and report it to store security.
- Look down at the bottom of the shopping cart.
- Whether it is a shoplifter or a pervert, hiding something on the bottom of a shopping cart is one of the oldest tricks in the book but it still works a lot of the time.
- Be wary of someone who seems to be wandering around the store with no real purpose.
- The furtive glances around also give him away.
- Turn the tables!
- Use your own smartphone camera (with sound and flash turned off if you want to avoid a direct confrontation) to get a picture of the guy.
The need for such (excellent) advice seems an indictment of our post-1960’s society…
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