I gave a statement to two lovely police officers who visited me at home this lunchtime. At my request they passed the case to the officer investigating the harassment, and she has been asking further questions to clarify. The suspect in both cases is the same person.
This latter officer was also present representing the police at the safeguarding meeting my daughter and I attended on Wednesday. The health service, the council social services and the police are all trying to work together on this to make sure my daughter and I have the resources we need. It’s okay but I know from experience that you have to keep pushing them otherwise they forget all about you again.
Starting my first holiday since October ( excluding 1 day and Bank Holidays )
I had a whole piece written out… But suffice to say my employer who has “People Values” has, for no fathomable reason, decided to shaft employees due back pay for performance [ even if we have highly exceeded that during lockdown]…
And the house roof is leaking again after a temporary fix last year.
We got a smartcam and put it in the living room window to see what it captured.
This morning at 7am it showed this:
[deleted still image]
This is the third egging. I think we just need to be patient, and the identity of the culprit will become clear. I’ve also photographed the detritus in the front garden so I have a good fix on the trajectory.
Be careful about the legal frame here, I know that in France we are not allowed to put camera that can see the public street. They could be tempted to go back at you and sue you for that…
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) regulates this kind of domestic CCTV use. I’ve got to be careful about publishing the pictures. I’m going to delete the one I posted, which shows an egged window but also shows neighbouring properties and a car. The use of the camera is justified for crime prevention since there’s no other reasonable way to monitor the area and the video is purged very frequently.
I’m new to the system so I don’t know how sensitive it is. Also it’s possible that the egging was done under cover of darkness and the video was only triggered by a passing car. The camera is designed for internal use and for practical reasons I can’t use its infra-red features to view outdoor activities through the window pane, so it’s rather blind at night. I’m going to install a SD card to enable continuous monitoring.
If I’m going to be subject to assault in the street, it’s time I had a bodycam. I picked this up for £34 on an Amazon special. It comes with lots of accessories.
Make sure you secure that or hide it. It sounds like you’re dealing with someone who wouldn’t have any moral qualms about relieving you of your possession of this, or even destroying it while on your person.
I haven’t yet had time to work out the details, but yes I do need to secure it. Also I will look for a way to stream it in real time so destroying or grabbing it doesn’t stop the previous footage being of use.
Not long ago this kind of surveillance technology would have been expensive and fiddly. I’m impressed by what you get for so little. I could even attach the camera to Neve in its waterproof shell and capture a dog’s eye view of the beach and the waves.
Edit: reading this back I’m marvelling at the situation as I’ve described it. I live in an area that, while not particularly genteel by national standards, is one of the most affluent in Sunderland. My daughter lives just over the hill from us, in what is quite an idyllic area on paper even if the house prices are lower. Children play in the street where she lives during the day, they’re friendly kids and their parents obviously care about them very much. But it’s still very “rough” as I can detect by the nagging pain in my rib from being chased down and assaulted last week.
I just can’t imagine this happening in my street. It’s a bit much to swallow happening in her area. The people in my daughter’s street seem to be stuck in a school playground mentality. They don’t seem to know how to act like grownups at all.
I really feel for you and your daughter both. I’ve dealt with little scrotes in the past who decided to start taking it out on me for defending my son from them; the school were very helpful and having the dashcam footage emailed to their parents had the desired effect. What you’re going through is so, so much worse. I can feel the anger as well as the distress, I know the feeling of blowing a fuse. I’d like to have fantastic advice and to make everything right, but I obviously don’t. Just keep strong and remember there’s a whole bunch of soldering iron-wielding synth nerds out here looking out for you
That made me grin. I know there’s nothing you fellow nerds can do, but it does help me a lot to be able to write here and read responses. I don’t think the police would have reviewed the crime classification and upgraded it to a hate crime if Sandy hadn’t identified it as such on this thread, causing me to promote that view of the situation to the police. That’s a pretty big change.
I was a late bloomer and one of the smallest kids in class. One guy in particular bullied me a lot.
Not physically but he made sure that i was in fear all the time.
When i left school I kept carrying that burden and hatred around with me until i went to a school reunion many years later.
There he was again, my arc-enemy , acted like we were best friends. He was not aware what i went through.
It all fell off of me. I wasn’t even angry with him anymore.
(Besides i’m now taller than him)
Fear is the only enemy, bullies just have a sorry live themselves i guess.
Having a fairly quiet week off, not touched the work phone except to complain that 27hrs (over 1.5 weeks) of overtime ( We don’t normally get overtime ever, but this was a VERY important issue ) which was supposed to be paid double was at standard rate… That’s really made my enthusiasm for heading back in next Tuesday plummet further than before.
Built a counter over the washing machine, with some shelves above too. That’s worked out ok…
