The Stalker Sagas Continue

Argh.

So there's been a lot of frustration over the past few days.

It seems that as soon as I made the revelation, as detailed in my last post, that I had figured out that I might have a stalker, the stalker decided to affirm that fact-- by calling me eight times in twenty-four hours. Including four calls between midnight and 1am.

Even more frustrating that the simple existance of this cowardly person (I have a theory about who it may be, actually, but without any evidence I'm hesitant to make much of it), is the inability to do anything about it.

You see, although repeated contacts, including calling someone and hanging up multiple times, could technically be construed as criminal harassment, my cell phone provider is of the opinion that unless someone directly threatens to kill me, their privacy is more important than my safety.

In a nutshell, I was told my my cell provider that they would not disclose the identity of this mystery caller unless I had a formal police report. So I filed a police report (first time I've ever had to do something like that in my life-- a little surreal, in all honesty).
At which point, the cell provider told the police that they would not give out the number of this caller unless they had a subpoena or a warrant (not clear-- told different things by different people).

Now, for those of you not familiar with legal-ese, a subpoena is no small feat. It involves going before a judge, and is the type of thing that is done when, for instance, someone needs to be forced to testify at a murder trial.
And this is required to find out the identity of the harasser-- when other cell phone providers have an easy call trace feature-- 100% subpoena free!

So the police say their hands are tied unless I am actually threatened (they say a judge will never grant this for something so minor)-- despite the fact that what this person is doing is against the law.

And the cell phone company is so kind as to waive the charge for getting a new number if I fax them the police report. Gee, thanks!

What really gets me is just how symbolic this is of our justice system as a whole.
Everyone I contact just tells me that the solution is to get a new number.
And, quite frankly, fuck that. I'll be damned if I'm the one who has to be inconvenienced by all this. It's a messed up system when the onus is put on the victim to change their behaviour, rather than actually attempting to catch the perpetrator.
Changing my number does nothing. It causes a tremendous inconvenience to me, it lets the cell phone company pretend they give a shit, and given the fact that this person has my unlisted cell phone, means that they likely know me and can get my new number.

This is the very same system that spends more time and money warning women not to walk home late at night, rather than actually finding the people preying on them. It penalizes victims of credit card fraud if someone they knew stole their credit card.
I'm not disagreeing that you shouldn't try your best to keep safe- but why is the burden always on how we should change our behaviours? Why not on how we can make the world safer so we don't need to worry about everything?

Anyways, on my front, I'm going to try to get out of my cell phone contract and switch to a provider (while keeping the same phone number-- it's mine, dammit!) who prioritizes customer safety over privacy and has a call trace feature. I have a few ideas of how to get them to comply-- anyone else have any advice?

Sorry for the bitterness! It gets aggravating realizing the reality of situations like this, and just spending a day jumping through hoops, only to find nothing can be done. On the bright side, I have decided that, while of course I'm going to be extra-focused on my safety these days, I'm not letting this get to me. I had lots of fun this weekend despite all this, and I'm getting excited for my trip!

And here's a picture of a dog with a cone on its head, just because it's funny, and I wanted to end this post with a smile. Poor little puggly!