<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;nothing would have come of it had they not traced the guy&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Notify the cops. Track the guy down. Go to the station and request someone come out with you. This takes cops off the desk, which they’re rarely against unless you’re a nutter.</text><parent_chain><item><author>kanyethegreat</author><text>I thought this too. But you can feel incredibly powerless if all you do is “let the police handle it.” Even in this instance, nothing would have come of it had they not traced the guy. Prosecution of crime happens after a crime is committed. Cops can’t do much if you’re worried someone &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; harm you or a loved one. Even if stalking is illegal, cops won’t &amp;#x2F; can’t feasibly spend the resources investigating and punishing stalkers. Even prosecuting sexual assault (ie. after a serious crime has been committed) is extremely difficult.&lt;p&gt;What actually effective steps can you take if someone is harassing a female in your life? Speaking from personal experience, the lip service of “cops are there to protect you” is inadequate. It didn’t provide any safety, and I can’t see how, structurally, it even could.</text></item><item><author>ketzo</author><text>Maybe obvious, but uh: don’t fucking do this!&lt;p&gt;I get it, I&amp;#x27;m an older brother, I would wanna go ballistic too. But the fact that these guys skipped over &amp;quot;notify the police&amp;quot; and went straight to &amp;quot;seek out in-person confrontation&amp;quot; is insane!&lt;p&gt;Stalkers are not people in their right mind. Staking out and planning to “citizen’s arrest”(???) someone who has repeatedly visited late at night to threaten and harass is NOT SAFE FOR ANYONE INVOLVED.&lt;p&gt;Do not ever physically escalate with a stalker! Collect evidence and get the authorities involved!</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>How we turned the tables to catch my sister’s Bumble stalker</title><url>https://major-grooves.medium.com/how-we-turned-the-tables-to-catch-my-sisters-bumble-stalker-e1979d39670d</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>ketzo</author><text>Yeah, but like... they didn&amp;#x27;t even &amp;quot;let the police handle it.&amp;quot; They just went straight to &amp;quot;late-night stakeout.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Cops can’t do much if you’re worried someone will harm you or a loved one.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re right, and that would be a scary situation... if they didn&amp;#x27;t have more than enough evidence for the police to get involved. Repeated, late-night visits to leave threatening messages would be plenty for a restraining order in the U.S., or at the very least to spur further police investigation.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; What actually effective steps can you take if someone is harassing a female in your life?&lt;p&gt;In this case, her brothers could have taken turns driving home from work with her, walking her to her car, sleeping over at her place, while they waited for police to proceed with investigation. They could have helped her get connected with a self-defense course, or bought her mace (depending on legality).&lt;p&gt;Stalkers&amp;#x2F;harassers can make people feel extremely helpless, and yes, there are a lot of really horrible situations where cops are useless despite an obvious threat.&lt;p&gt;This... is not one of those situations.</text><parent_chain><item><author>kanyethegreat</author><text>I thought this too. But you can feel incredibly powerless if all you do is “let the police handle it.” Even in this instance, nothing would have come of it had they not traced the guy. Prosecution of crime happens after a crime is committed. Cops can’t do much if you’re worried someone &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; harm you or a loved one. Even if stalking is illegal, cops won’t &amp;#x2F; can’t feasibly spend the resources investigating and punishing stalkers. Even prosecuting sexual assault (ie. after a serious crime has been committed) is extremely difficult.&lt;p&gt;What actually effective steps can you take if someone is harassing a female in your life? Speaking from personal experience, the lip service of “cops are there to protect you” is inadequate. It didn’t provide any safety, and I can’t see how, structurally, it even could.</text></item><item><author>ketzo</author><text>Maybe obvious, but uh: don’t fucking do this!&lt;p&gt;I get it, I&amp;#x27;m an older brother, I would wanna go ballistic too. But the fact that these guys skipped over &amp;quot;notify the police&amp;quot; and went straight to &amp;quot;seek out in-person confrontation&amp;quot; is insane!&lt;p&gt;Stalkers are not people in their right mind. Staking out and planning to “citizen’s arrest”(???) someone who has repeatedly visited late at night to threaten and harass is NOT SAFE FOR ANYONE INVOLVED.&lt;p&gt;Do not ever physically escalate with a stalker! Collect evidence and get the authorities involved!</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>How we turned the tables to catch my sister’s Bumble stalker</title><url>https://major-grooves.medium.com/how-we-turned-the-tables-to-catch-my-sisters-bumble-stalker-e1979d39670d</url></story>