If Mr. Pervo is a registered sex offender, then yes, being that close to a school is probably a violation of his parole. Or, to assume a more innocent scenario, if the person’s an ex-custodial parent, he may be violating a restraining order.
There’s also probably laws against loitering in a public place, depending on the jurisdiction. Innocent or not, the described situation does sound rather hinky.
I don’t really see anything “gross” about the question—how can a question about a point of law be disgusting or repulsive? The only adjective I can think of to ascribe to the question is ‘inflammatory,’ but even that’s a stretch. It’s just a legal question. I’ll take it one step further: what if I go to the playground and stand around in a raincoat taking pics of everything that moves? Is there anything that anybody can legally do about it, assuming that I am not a member of any of the sanctioned groups already mentioned?
Any loitering law worded anywhere near that vaguely will be struck down in a nanosecond as unconstitutional if it’s challenged. The Supreme Court has frequently struck down anti-loitering laws that are too vague, or that give too much leeway to authorities.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that people don’t get arrested for loitering. It happens a lot, because police often don’t know or don’t care about the right to stand around on public property doing nothing in particular. Itr got so bad in Baltimore that the City State’s Attorney had to tell the City Council and the cops that they couldn’t arrest people simply for hanging around leaning on a car.
A school police officer was on campus today for an unknown reason, so I took a minute of his time and described the situation and asked what he recommended I do, if anything, should I observe something similar in the future. His suggestion was to send a student with a note describing the car and its location to the office, and have the office contact school police. The police would then send someone to drive by and see if it’s anyone who should not be there. He did not want the person chased away by opening Nextels or similar action; something more subtle, but with direct police contact, was his preference.
I still have to wonder if I really have reason to be as creeped out as I was–those of you who believe I’m seeing a pedo every time I see someone watching children, I have a similar logical regulator that is nagging me, “IS this really it? Or are you just reacting?” Because of that internal logic regulator–heh, I think of it as my engineer father’s voice–I asked the officer about the situation, and simply, “DOES this sort of thing happen? Really?” His answer was, honestly, NOT what I wanted to hear. What I wanted to hear was, naw, not really, and then I could fault my annoying emotions for interfering with rational thought. Instead, he said it is a very common problem in this area–“Unfortunately, with a community the size of this one, there are a lot of very sick, very unstable people with access to vehicles” and how schools tend to be a draw for them. Another middle school just a mile or so up the road had such a significant problem with this (due to its location; I assume he meant the freeway) that the police needed to constantly patrol the area.
He also described one situation where a man who would sit in his car, watch, then leave when someone tipped off police–then wait while the cop car went by, circle around, and come back again to return to watching. He did this several times, apparently, before the police were finally able to intercept him.
I still hope I’m wrong about Mr. Buick, and that the “creepy” was my own creation. Geez, I don’t WANT to see shit like that, and again, it wasn’t my first thought. If nothing else, he opened my naive eyes to a problem (however frequent, I don’t know) and what I can do in the future should something suspicious like that occur again.
OMG, that video is sure to creep kids out but I completely lost it when the big guy says “I’ll kill your dog!”
OMG, that video is sure to creep kids out but I completely lost it when the big guy says “I’ll kill your dog!”
I work at a large elementary school and in these circumstances I will walk right up to them and ask loudly “Can I help you?” while getting their description, licence plate, etc… Usually, they explain themselves or ask for assistance but in the cases where they flee, at least they know I’ve noticed them and can identify them.
I find it also settles my mind and keeps me from imagining the worst.
I was actually thinking about taking this approach next time; I have no problem approaching people and asking them the “Can I help you?” line. I think part of what deterred me in this situation is the chain link fence , distance from the fence to the car (sidewalk inbetween), and the car’s closed windows made it less feasible and it just didn’t come to mind (well, I tried to make eye contact while peering in, thinking maybe he’d roll down his window; no dice). Still, I have no problem walking up to people and just talking. I was wondering about maybe going that direction next time, but that would now go against what the police officer suggested. Meh, I’ll probably do a combination of the two, depending on the situation.
An anecdote–today at lunch I mentioned the situation in my OP, and one of the fellow teachers (who grew up in this city) said she was at a playground once with friends when a man came to her and asked in Spanish if she’d like to get milk out of him. Being 8 at the time, she thought he meant go get milk, or something innocent. He offered her $100 to do it and invited her to his car, and she was thinking, “Oh, okay” and would have gone with him had an older cousin not arrived. She said it never occurred to her something was wrong until much later…ugh, and ick. Still, she wasn’t scarred from it because she wasn’t ever afraid in the situation.
One of my ex-bosses is creepy as hell.
He used to teach highschool PE, and enjoy looking at all the 13-16 year old girls. Actually ended up marrying one of his students.
And he propositioned colleagues.
Ick - not the sort of person I want as a teacher for my daughter.
Wait … what? It’s not working? 