RogerS
Established Member
I'm posting this sorry tale as the sequence of events might help anyone else unfortunate to be in the same situation.
I'm Chairman of our block of flats residents committee. Around the beginning of May, an American lady approached some of our residents in a state of some distress as her luggage had been stolen. She had, allegedly, brought down her luggage, left it in the road unattended and on her return, surprise, surprise it had been stolen. Pretty damn stupid.
Since that day, she has been periodically billposting requests for information about her lost luggage/reward considered/amnesty if the guilty party comes forward...that sort of thing. Something of an obsessive, she clearly needs some sort of counselling or psychiatric help.
She doesn't learn from her mistakes, leaving her rucksack unattended outside our block..complete with laptop inside while she accosted people at the other end of the block.
Suffice to say, we started to get a bit fed-up with her, especially as she has a rather confrontational approach..."Did YOU steal my luggage?" and so I asked her to desist from posting these notices on our property and also to stop trespassing. Since that time, she has now become convinced that I stole her luggage. So on 5th June, I found a letter addressed to me accusing me of being a thief/liar and much worse...complete with a lot of f*** words.
Now in my experience, these sort of things need nipping in the bud otherwise they escalate. So I toddled off to the local police station (Paddington Green, you might have heard of it :wink: ). The bobby there said he would try and phone her and suggest that she desisted.
All went quiet and I thought that he had succeeded until on 9 June, yet another letter was hand-delivered, more vitriolic in tone, accusing me of being homosexual etc. So off I went to Paddington Green again, and spent about 45 minutes while all details were entered onto Crimint (the Criminal Intelligence system) because two letters don't constitute harassment. They asked me to hang on to the letters etc.
Again, it all went very quiet until this morning when the third letter appeared. This time I spent an hour while all the details were entered into the Crime system, the letters individually bagged into evidence bags, a short verbal statement given.
The next step apparently is for someone from the Criminal Social Unit (??) to contact me for a more formal statement. They will then write to her telling her to refrain from approaching me and/or our property. If she persists then they arrest her and, all things being equal, she will appear in court. At that time hopefully social services will get involved and she will get the help that she clearly needs.
The bizarre twist in all of this is that, according to the crime report created when she reported her luggage stolen, she claimed that it was stolen from 97 in our road. My flat is at number 6...over three blocks away.
The advice is make sure you document everything and keep all letters etc should this happen to you as the initial response would be to throw them away.
I'm Chairman of our block of flats residents committee. Around the beginning of May, an American lady approached some of our residents in a state of some distress as her luggage had been stolen. She had, allegedly, brought down her luggage, left it in the road unattended and on her return, surprise, surprise it had been stolen. Pretty damn stupid.
Since that day, she has been periodically billposting requests for information about her lost luggage/reward considered/amnesty if the guilty party comes forward...that sort of thing. Something of an obsessive, she clearly needs some sort of counselling or psychiatric help.
She doesn't learn from her mistakes, leaving her rucksack unattended outside our block..complete with laptop inside while she accosted people at the other end of the block.
Suffice to say, we started to get a bit fed-up with her, especially as she has a rather confrontational approach..."Did YOU steal my luggage?" and so I asked her to desist from posting these notices on our property and also to stop trespassing. Since that time, she has now become convinced that I stole her luggage. So on 5th June, I found a letter addressed to me accusing me of being a thief/liar and much worse...complete with a lot of f*** words.
Now in my experience, these sort of things need nipping in the bud otherwise they escalate. So I toddled off to the local police station (Paddington Green, you might have heard of it :wink: ). The bobby there said he would try and phone her and suggest that she desisted.
All went quiet and I thought that he had succeeded until on 9 June, yet another letter was hand-delivered, more vitriolic in tone, accusing me of being homosexual etc. So off I went to Paddington Green again, and spent about 45 minutes while all details were entered onto Crimint (the Criminal Intelligence system) because two letters don't constitute harassment. They asked me to hang on to the letters etc.
Again, it all went very quiet until this morning when the third letter appeared. This time I spent an hour while all the details were entered into the Crime system, the letters individually bagged into evidence bags, a short verbal statement given.
The next step apparently is for someone from the Criminal Social Unit (??) to contact me for a more formal statement. They will then write to her telling her to refrain from approaching me and/or our property. If she persists then they arrest her and, all things being equal, she will appear in court. At that time hopefully social services will get involved and she will get the help that she clearly needs.
The bizarre twist in all of this is that, according to the crime report created when she reported her luggage stolen, she claimed that it was stolen from 97 in our road. My flat is at number 6...over three blocks away.
The advice is make sure you document everything and keep all letters etc should this happen to you as the initial response would be to throw them away.
