I’m not excusing harassing anyone. That’s ridiculous. And that sounds like the whole situation OP was talking about was horribly handled by the police, but I’d be curious to know what they were told. I worked in 911 and there should have been a lot of questions asked if that caller, like why they felt it was suspicious. I’m guessing they had a reason but sometimes the callers are just fucking insane and make shit up. I do know that if the cops rolled up on a normal guy taking his kid for a walk, they don’t just automatically run up and cuff you for no reason so the caller must have made some shit up, or saw something that was concerning. My point is that the caller wasn’t wrong to be watching, and if they did see something suspicious, to call the police about it. See something. Say something.

And I know must child “abductions” are BS custody dispute type things very well, I took a lot of those calls too. Personally entered probably 1,000 missing juveniles into NCIC only to remove them again hours later. That’s not the shit I’m talking about, and you know it.

I was a kid once. I was molested by a strange man in a movie theater while watching 101 Dalmatians when I was about ten, and then he tried to abduct my friend and I. He was thankfully chased off by good samaritans who were paying attention. He was however never caught. I shudder to think of his next victims. That also was not an isolated incident. And I have had more than my share of unwanted creepy male attention, primarily BEFORE I reached puberty.

There are terrible men out there, whether y’all want to believe it to be true or not. I know my experience as a woman, and the experiences I had as a child, and I can tell you with absolute fucking certainty…children are targets. Women are targets. And there are predators fucking everywhere.