PC Bloggs and the Unusual Case of the Email Harassment.

I deal with frequent cases of harassment. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these include some form of electronic communication, usually texts but also emails. I say unfortunately, because there is no possible way for British police officers to investigate these offences.

If I read the texts the victim has received in order to establish whether or not a harassment has taken place, I am acting lawfully. But as soon as I take crazy actions like reading the texts for the deliberate purpose of writing down the telephone number they have come from, I have over-stepped the mark. In practice I do this anyway, but hey, I'm just a rebel.

I once "investigated" a case of EMAIL HARASSMENT. I can almost hear you gasping: "Investigated? Surely not!" This is the course my investigation took:

1. Attended address and read emails sent to victim.
2. Agreed that the emails constituted rather nasty death threats including the words "garotte", "entrails" and "die". There were exaggerating features such as the fact that the vicitm was involved in problems with mafiosi in Pakistan.
   
3. Used my superlative TRANSFERABLE I.T. SKILLS to download the email headers.
4. Submitted the contents to the Department of Paper-grinders to authorise a trace on the headers.
5. Received response that as Yahoo was an international company, this was impossible. Never mind the fact that the sender was thought to be in the UK and you can buy software that will trace the sender to his home computer for under £8 ($12).
6. Informed the victim there was nothing the police could do, but for £8 an unscrupulous net-service could do the job in a second.

The victim was not particularly happy. Fortunately this was not one of the cases where she was later stabbed to death.

Note:
You might be asking yourselves at what point during the investigation did I consider the option that the victim might be an ex-KGB spy who had defected, who was at risk of poisoning at any moment?

The answer is, I ALWAYS consider that option - it's more of an undying hope really.

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