Stalking
Serial vs parallel stalking
The term gang in gangstalking evokes an image of a street gang all following someone in
parallel, when in fact the gang is a large surveillance team who follow the target mostly in
serial, ie. taking it in turns to stalk them along their route, with a frequency of perhaps on
average 1 new stalker per street.
Surveillance teams will consist of at least 50 people in, for example, a city. The members
of the team will take it in turns to stalk a target that is 'on the move' street by street or
location by location. This stalking will be done mainly in serial (i.e. they will line the target's
route in a pass the baton fashion), though it can oftentimes be in paralel (i.e. multiple
members of the surveillance team are surrounding the target at any one time). Potentially
there can be dozens of members of the surveillance team surroundng one target at any
one time.
The guise of the surveillance teams
In order to attempt to make the stalking 'covert' the members of the surveillance team will
be branded as regular members of the community - such as taxi drivers, delivery drivers,
milk floats (in the early morning), motorbikes with L plates, joggers, cyclists, dog walkers
etc. and will try to blend into the rest of the community. The vehicles used are real
company vehicles, such as taxis, that the company running the surveillance team will be
paying the local company to use.
Any type of vehicle or person that would be 'out and about' travelling all over the place is a
candidate for the disguising of the surveillance team members. This disguising allows the members of the surveillance teams to 'hide in plain sight'.
The members of the surveillance teams are mostly adults, but may also include young
people - i.e. 'child spies'.
The fact that they are made to look like regular members of the community is why it is
sometimes referred to as community stalking or community harasment.
They never have a real purpose for being near the target, only a fake one.
Fig 5. This is what a surveillance team looks like.
'Surveillance role play' / 'street theatre'
When trying to blend in, they will often 'act' in order to appear convincing. A fake taxi, for
example, will pretend to have passengers in the back of the taxi (when they are actually
also members of the surveillance team). A fake taxi will also drop passenger's off and pick
them up in order to try to create the illusion of being real. Another person might be
standing in the middle of the road with a phone to their ear, pretending to be on the phone.
Another person may be near the target with the car bonnet flipped, pretending to fix their
vehicle.
The target notices the unlikely nature of this often very bad acting and how their world has
suddenly changed from how it used to be - in terms of traffic flow and unlikely and strange
things happening all along their journey - and most commonly refers to this continuous
acting all along their route as 'street theatre'.
Rotation of the surveillance teams around the country
It's likely that someone being stalked will attempt to track the numberplates of the cars
stalking them. In order to prevent this, the surveillance teams are rotated around the
country, so that on each day there is a new surveillance team operating in a particular
area. If the target attempts to track the numberplates, therefore, it will be practically
impossible. The effect of this rotation is that, over time, the individual will have literally
thousands of stalkers going through the middle of their life.
Color coordination and hand signals
Members of the surveillance team will sometimes color coordinate themselves - such as
having mostly red or white vehicles, or all wearing items of red clothing.
They will also use very subtle hand signal gestures to communicate with other members of
the team, for example, indicating the target's position (hand signals are a common form of
communication in many industries in everything from police and military to sport referees
to crane operators). As they are subtle, these hand signals may only be visible when
recording the members of the surveillance team with a camera with optical zoom.
CCTV camera's used as an adjunct
There are not enough CCTV camera's to follow an individual 24/7, but they are linked in
with the mobile surveillance system and are used as an adjunct. If the target on the
watchlist manages somehow to evade surveillance they will be picked up again where
CCTV cameras are located. |
