GPD's Final Case Report Regarding My Harassment Complaint

Detective Mayo had deliberately fudged the final report on my harassment case.

Detective Mayo had one job to do, and one job only. ...To subpoena the IP logs from Bellsouth and Yahoo. That was it. It was the only thing that I had asked him to do....begged him to do. Everything else...all the extra "background" information that he had demanded of me, was nonsequitor information that would only serve to confuse and which could not possibly be summarized up into one little paragraph as he obviously was wanting, or be in any way helpful to the task at hand that I was trying to accomplish - 1) to prove a harassment had just occured, and 2) to develop a pattern of harassment behavior which was officialy recorded in my complaints on file - as officially recommended by every standard operating procedures manual that was OUT there on the subject matter.

It didn't help that the original cop, an officer Walker, who had originally been dispatched to my house, had written an initial report which was rushed, which didn't pay much attention to details at all, and which report got most of my statements and facts completely wrong. It was so inaccurate from the original statements that I had made, in fact, that the officer's report didn't make any sense at all. It's almost as if he did that on purpose but I know that it's really because he didn't care and because he had prejudiced me from the moment that I first opened my mouth. He wasn't listening or paying any great attention to any of the details being given him. Officer Walker acted very irritated, and like he thought I was nuts, and like he really didn't want to be there. It was very obvious that the job was getting to him and that he was ready for an early retirement, fast. But it's really difficult trying to sum up years worth of harassments into one sentence for a cop who is standing there in front of you wanting something already put together for him. But that's basically what they want. And even as I spoke, the officer stared off in every direction except at my face while I talked. He didn't want to pay attention. He wanted to leave.

I told the officer that I'd received a harassing email, and that it was on the heels of lots of previous harassments from local ham radio operators...harassments which had been going on for years. I told him that whoever had sent it had done so by creating a fake Yahoo account in my name, then sent the email, and then deleted the account in an obvious effort to try to conceal the originator. I told him I didn't know who had sent it, but that it was possible it could have been a guy named Frederick Scott West because he'd done things like this in the past, before, and it fit his M.O. I told the officer that these people were so bad that I'd even tried going into hiding for a while - avoiding going out to public meetings with GARS (the Gainesville Amateur Radio Society), GARC (the University of Florida's Gator Amateur Radio Club), or writing anybody any emails, or otherwise giving people any chance to be reminded of me. (It never worked, by the way.) I told him that in the past these people had email bombed me, pager bombed me, rang my phone off the hook, filled up my answering machine with demands and threats. On use of the term "email bombing" and "pager bombing", the officer looked surprised and then distressed. He stared at me, cocked his head to the side, dropped his mouth, and then dropped his arms at his side - which were holding his pen and notepad, as if he thought I was completely nuts. He was obviously not familiar with those cyberstalking-related terms. I also told the officer that I had repeatedly warned these people that if they did not stop, that I would start filing complaints against them and pressing real charges against people. I told him that the hams did not seem to be afraid of that, and in fact began to get even worse, as if in dare.

The entire time though, the officer looked extremely irritated. He made irritated faces. He looked like he thought I was just oh so damned stupid, like he thought my entire complaint was stupid, and like he just wanted to get the hell out of there - from the very moment that he had knocked on my door, in fact. As I tried to explain things to him, I wasn't able to complete any sentences. He constantly interrupted me. "Say that again?" "What was his name?" "What's that?" "Can you spell that for me?" I just couldn't get a completed thought out with this guy. Then he adds: "You know that you your name isn't protected by copyright and that you can't put a copyright on your own name. Right?" I wanted to bang my god damned head against the wall. I began to realize that, forensically-speaking, this guy was incompetent and he had no clue what to do with this situation he'd landed in, and he was goign to end up destroying my case by getting facts wrong and setting the wrong tone for subsequent officers who will inevitably be assigned to this.

Little did I know just how spot on I would end up being. This was just the start of a repeated pattern of problems with the local police departments. This situation right here became one of the many cornerstone mistakes in handling which would end up only causing me even greater problems later down the road - not only with my stalkers (who felt emboldened by seeing this reaction in the police departments) - but with other agencies, as well. The WAY that this particular complaint was handled, and the subsequent way in which is was written, guaranteed a prejudice being developed in any later readers. And that is exactly what happened. This initial officer's inappropriate reactions and handling doomed me and helped seal the fate on how this case would eventually end.

I wonder. Do they treat women like this when they file a stalking/harassment complaint? Why do women get taken more seriously? Why was I actually treated like I was an asshole...repeatedly...by so many people within the walls of GPD; and like I was being completely silly, for complaining about this? Do you know how many times I laid in bed crying over this stuff, over how the police seemed to be actually working against me, over how I seemed to have NO protection and over how my stalkers seemed to have completely control of everybody and everything? I'm a grown man. It takes a LOT to get ME to cry. Why is there a difference like this in treatment between male and female complainants at all? Is it assumed that males are supposed to "man up" or something?...be stronger and thus better able to handle these things? Are women fragile creatures which must be protected from everything - major and minor? ...Is it that us men are supposed to take stuff like this up the ass - while women only have to but cry and the whole world comes to their rescue? What's up with that?

But the officer that day just wasn't there. He had no clue what was going on, and didn't care. To him, he just wanted to file the report and move the hell on. And it showed in what he actually put into his report. I knew he wasn't going to get any of the details right, and I was afraid of that. Sure enough, that's what actually happened...a report that makes me sound like I'm an idiot.

...And that report is what Detective Joseph Mayo saw, later, when it was finally assigned to him.

The extraneous information was not important to the task put to Mayo. I knew that telling him the very complicated and excrutiatingly long additional background would only serve to confuse him, make him frustrated and impatient, and perhaps even cause pre-judgement, as had already happened with Officer Walker. I was worried about that. When people pre-judge, they tune out your story. They don't want to hear it full out because they've already made up their minds. Then they don't get the story down fully and with any real want for accuracy. I was deathly afraid of this and tried to resist giving him any background story, but he insisted. And in the end, exactly what I had feared would occur...did occur. But I had no idea that the man would actually go as far as he did in the end. I am today extremely frightened of this guy, now...because I now realize...the man is a bad cop.

When Detective Mayo wanted to know the background story, he was asking me to go into a story which was extremely long and complicated and which did not have the "short and simple" answers he was wanting. It was a story which went back so far and which was so involved and so complicated and which involved so many people that I was afraid that if I even dared go into it then he might cut me off somewhere inside the first paragraph, and prejudice me, and make wild assumptions and that this might prevent him from doing the job that he was being asked to do: subpoena the IP logs. His request for me to go into it placed an unfair burden upon me to have to EXPLAIN THE ENTIRE STORY TO HIS SATISFACTION *FIRST* before he might proceed. And in fact, my worst fears came true. The Detective did think that my story was ridiculous; he did prejudice me; he did lose interest; and he feigned getting things done when he actually wasn't doing anything at all. ...And he lied to me, and he never subpoenaed those IP logs. In the end...he sabotaged my case, instead of helping me.

There IS no "Officer Friendly" in today's world. They don't exist anymore. :(

He was not asked to be judge and jury. He was not asked to make assignment of who was guilty and who was innocent. That job was for a judge and only a judge to perform at a later time. But Detective Mayo took things into his own hands, and made generalizations, and guessed, used 'gut feeling', and allowed himself to become emotionally involved in the case; and in the end he became "Judge Dredd", and ended up deliberately sabotaging and destroying my case and any chance of me making my harassers stop. In fact, by doing that, he encouraged them to get worse, while most importantly...writing a report so condescending in verbiage that it would prevent any future police agency from considering me in any serious way, or thinking of me as anything other than completely ridiculous and trying to use the law to harass innocent people.

From the beginning all the way up until the end of my harassment complaint - from Officer Walker to Detective Mayo - GPD officers prejudiced my complaints, jumped to conclusions, wrote generalized reports which belittled my complaint, and which were inaccurate, left many details out, and which caused other people and officers involved later to assume that I was some nutcase who was blowing things way out of propertion. They labeled me, prejudiced me. My case was severely mishandled by the Gainesville Police Department. In the end, they ended up only causing me further harm because my stalkers only got worse after having become encouraged by the fact that NWS, ACOEM and now, the police department, had all taken some action to prevent me from protecting myself. I can see the beer mugs clicking together in rejoicing. (sigh)

In the final report by Detective Mayo, it is obvious that he had done no work at all. Look at it. It is the work of a lazy student who waited until the last minute to complete his final, and his work shows that. He copied the previous officer's statements, had really none of his own real hard work to mention. There was no mention of any work done on his part at all...except that he had "decided" that it was civil rather than criminal. He made the judgement that no crime had been committed while making no effort to get any research done to prove it at all before coming to that conclusion. He wasn't asked to come to that conclusion. He was asked to subpoena the IP logs. The determination of "civil" vs. "criminal" only affects which courtroom the case is handled in. It has nothing to do with whether or not somone can or should subpoena the logs. And in the report there is no mention of my request for him to subpoena the logs, no mention of how he repeatedly pulled the wrong case file, no mention of how he repeatedly told me that he had obtained the logs and how they looked fudged. There was no mention of anything at all like that.

...Only a condescending and rude generalization which is designed to make anyone else who reads my report in the future to think that I am rediculous and to not take me seriously. Anyone who reads that report can see that it's not anything professional. Not in the slightest. It's condescension. There's no police work mentioned at all. Just...complaint...about someone he considered an idiot. And that's what everyone is going to think now after reading it. He even prejudiced the State Attorneys Office opinion of my case. For that matter, every time Mayo said "...the State Atrorney's Office SAID...", he implicated them! Without even realizing it, Mayo was implicating that there was a conspiracy and a collusion going on between GPD and the Gainesville SAO. If you listen to Mayo really carefully there, he's saying that it's really the State Attorney's Office's fault because it was thier decision that it was civil and thus that he couldn't do anything! Yah. That's it. It's the SAO's fault. They tied poor Detective Mayo's hands. They're the ones who should be charged...sued...whatever. Right? Poor Detective Mayo. ...Such a good guy and all.

Quick quiz for the novices. If you have 6 months to subpoena IP logs, and a detective takes 7 months to investigate whether or not your case is even civil or criminal first so that you can then take it to the supposed "proper agency" to file the your complaint with and to finally begin the investigation which requires the use of those IP logs, and the logs were destroyed in the 6th month...explain how the victim and/or the Prosecution will be able to obtain those IP logs and use them against the criminals? Show your work on the back of this page.

THAT is what Detecive Mayo had done to me.

BECAUSE of the way in which this case was so improperly handled, there was no investigation of Melissa Royce, the person whom it later became apparent had actually sent the harassing email.

Because of the way hat this case was handled, Jeff Capehart was never interviewed as I had asked - to explain what he knew, his involvement, and especially (because I was keeping it secret from Mayo) how Jeff knew so much about this at the time that this case was still ongoing, before it had been officially made public. See, Jeff knew what my emails to Detective Mayo said almost as I was sending them. He knew that Mayo was complaining about how "thick" the stack of emails that I had sent him were. He knew that I had mentioned Dave Donnelly to the detective - the Asst. Emergency Mgr at the time, and Chief Will May, the Emergency Manager. Jeff used his knowledge of all this information to torture me about how much he knew about what was going on in my life, and to make me feel helpless.

Because of the completely irresponsible way this case was handled, evidence was allowed to be destroyed. Because of the way that this case was handled, any chance of handling this in criminal *OR* civil court was destroyed. Because of the way that this case was handled, other police agencies developed a prejudice against me whereever I had filed other complaints. Because of the way that this case was handled, the criminals didn't just get away; but they got away repeatedly...because they were helped.

What happened to the bad guys, afterwards?

* Melissa Royce. Melissa Royce would later be fired from both the Alachua County Office of Emergency Management and the Alachua County Red Cross for doing the exact same same thing to them that she'd also pulled with me sometime before: forging business cards, telling people she had titles and powers that she did not, and for too many complaints. Both agencies sent her letters simultaneously, each without the other realizing it. How does a volunteer...get fired? (Back in the Beforetime, I'd once made her an Asst. Coordinator of Alachua County SKYWARN. And I fired her for the very same reasons.) At the time that she was being fired from ACOEM and the ARC, Melissa was taking classes to become an Emergency Manager with the hopes of working at ACOEM. I shudder to think the power that that woman would have been able to muster to inflict pain and damage upon her enemies with had she actually obtained such a very powerful position. I shudder to think what more she might have had planned personally for me had she been given those powers. Firing her has so far been the only thing that Dave Donnelly has been able to get right in all of this.

UPDATE - January, 2012: I understand that she is still attempting to get into Emergency Management and is taking Emergency Management-related courses now at Jacksonville University. There also seems to be some sort of connection to Lincoln, NH. She may have applied for a position, there. This was called to my attentiion when someone repeatedly visited the harassment pages I'd written about Melissa using keyword searches using her name. On looking those keyword searches up myself, I came upon some entries about a Melissa Royce in an EM program in the Lincoln area. The hits were probably from her, or from someone researching her from up there. I figure if they were researching her, and it was originating from an EM agency up there, then it must have to do with employment. Albeit, that's just a guess; if but an educated one.

* Philip Royce. Except for some APRS references, references regarding Philip Royce have largely disappeared. I guess after I surprised and lambasted both he and his wife with the criminal investigation (regardless of it's outcome), I scared him shitless and he removed most of his personal information from the web. This is fine with me because it shows them both that I'm not the dumbass that they thought I was and that I WILL fight back if threatened.

* Jeff Capehart. Jeff Capehart would later (in 2009) end up hacking into the AC-EMWIN server computer (owned by me/Alachua County SKYWARN). That investigation was also subsequently sabotaged by UPD because of similar problems which occured, there. When I looked more deeply into Jeff Capehart in Google, I accidentally discovered an article from 1985 which mentioned how he and his wife Susan Tipton, along with three other UF students, had hacked into he UF's IFAS computer system. So Jeff had a hidden criminal background that Mayo had not realized. He should have listened to me and invested a little more effort into investigating what the hell I was telling him about, because Mr. Capehart then became such an even worse problem for me after Mayo sabotaged my case.

(*sigh!*) I want an explanation!

...And the sad thing is...Detective Mayo did this thinking that he was doing a service for someone. He actually thought he was doing a good thing. But in the end, he aided the bad guys, and screwed the good guy. ...Royally. There is no getting those logs now. They've been destroyed. They're gone. Detective Mayo made sure of that.

This was my chance to do something to make these people stop! Detective Mayo took matters into his own hands and completely and utterly destroyed it, personally. There is no excuse for what this man did. None. He had no right to do this to me. My stalkers saw what he did. They laughed about it. They joked about it. They probably even clicked mugs together in celebration. Once they saw that I had no police protection, they even got worse. What happened this day, affected all the following days with my harassers. His action here set the tone. What he did...that was for a judge; not him. But Detective Mayo took it upon himself. He was supposed to subpoena the logs ...The LOGS! They were so important! How can someone fuck that up having all of six months to do it? :(

At the beginning of the report, it says "UNFOUNDED", and at the end he concluded with "no criminal acts have been filed and this case is being closed." How does someone commit a computer & stalking CRIME and an officer then come to that final conclusion??? Did you catch what happened in that report? Detective Mayo basically admitted that he did zero work, and then left the entire case's outcome dependent upon whether some clueless cop in another entirely different department thought it was civil or criminal in nature. I sincerely doubt that had the State Attorney's Office ACTUALLY CONTACTED ME, they would not have reached that conclusion. I'd like to know what Detective Mayo said to the SAO that made them think that this was not a criminal case...especialy without subpoenaeing those logs, first. I'd like to know.

The final insult is at the top of the last page of the report. Take a look. It says "THE INFORMATION BELOW IS CONFIDENTIAL - FOR USE BY AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY". So what does THAT mean? Does it mean while the case is open and ongoing? Or does it mean "forever?" Am I not allowed to put my own report up on the web for others to see? Is this another "Scott West tagline" thing? You all know... Where Scott would put the privacy tagline at the bottom of all of the harassing emails he'd sent me thinking that the tagline would actually prevent me from being able to use his harassing emails against him in court? Oh, screw that! The report is going up, regardless. It's mine, it's about me. I have a right to do with it as I please. And the world will know what GPD did.

...But if it means that what is discussed about the case while it is ongoing is confidential, and that it's for authorised personnel only during that time, then what the hell was Jeff Capehart doing telling me all about the private details of my case before it was even closed?

In the end, Mayo had done nothing. He was asked to contact Jeff Capehart and get the story out of him about what he was being told by Phil and Melissa and about what he knew of their involvement. He never contacted Mr. Capehart. I now understand why.

He was asked to subpoena logs from Bellsouth and Yahoo, which logs are only required to be held these days for 6 months by these companies, and then they are destroyed. He lied when he told me that he'd subpoenaed them, and then in the seventh month admitted that he hadn't - after the logs had been destroyed.

In the end, he wrote his final report - part of which was a near verbatim stolen copy of the previous officer's inaccurate report - which contained no information about any of the work that Mayo had actually done over the past six months, or about all of the phone calls we'd had (save mention of one), the email exchanges, the requests I'd made. There was just carefully worded, interestingly condescending verbiage designed to make any other officers who might read the final report think that I was excessively paranoid and utterly ridiculous. He worded the report to make it sound like my complaint was about people taking control of Alachua County SKYWARN from me when in fact my complaint was about the harassing email. In fact what was said about Alachua County SKYWARN was non-essential background that he was not asked to investigate and, in the end, as I'd predicted, Mayo used it against me.

In the end, Mayo gave my case a big "UNFOUNDED" disposition - after having done nothing at all to gather any evidence at all - even though requested to. How does someone come up with an "unfounded" designation without having first attempting to gather evidence, first, to even back that label up? What the hell did he tell the SAO to make them come to the conclusion that no crime had been commited and that this was civil??? That's completely absurd! Mayo did absolutely nothing - no investigating at all. In his final report, he mentioned that the case had been sent to Asst. State Atty. Lee C. Libby, but he failed to mention that he had not done that until after seven months had first passed. I would like to see a copy of the "full report" that Mayo had handed Libby, to be sure that no condescending or prejudicial verbiage had been included, and to make sure that all of the facts had actually been properly presented, and to be absoluely certain that the SAO understood exactly what my complaint was really about. I'd repeatedly asked both Mayo for just that, in fact. Mayo repeatedly blew me off/ignored me. Libby...conveniently couldn't "remember". I doubt that the SAO fully comprehended properly what was going or else they wouldn't have said that the case was "civil" - that someone forging a Yahoo account to send a harassing email wasn't a stalking-related computer crime. That's just unbelievably absurd. Somebody screwed up badly SOMEwhere. I feel confident that had SAO heard this version of my complaint, they would not have come to that conclusion. And that begs the question again... What did Mayo say to SAO that made them think my complaint unimportant? I think Libby should be questioned on what it takes to make a computer stalking crime not a computer stalking crime. I'd like to take a look at those "definitions". If not completely duped by Mayo, then I would officially accuse Libby of being either "incompetent," or deliberately sabotaging a computer crimes case. At least, with Mayo's passing the blame off onto Libby, the current evidence would seem to support that Libby acted criminally. So...what's really going ON here? I would like to know.

When questioned about this just a few months later, Libby conveniently recalled absolutely nothing about the case. Neither did the SAO have any notes about the case, or anything to reference. How strange. I don't think any such thing as Mayo described ever really happened. I don't think that they ever had a real conversation and Mayo must have really made them believe I was a nutcase right from the beginning to come to a "nothing criminal" conclusion. Just who did these guys think they were trying to protect, here, by pulling this stunt? And did they really think they were going to get away with it? There is just too much inexplicable stuff going on here! It just cannot possibly be explained adequately away.

Note that in my particular case, Mayo's report does not in any way attempt to exhibit any sympathy for the victim's situation, or any concern for what happened. ...Only verbiage which actually seems oddly and inexplicably condescending and which seems intent on proving lunacy in the victim rather than any real concern. It almost seems to go out of it's way, in fact, to intimate ridiculousness in the part of the victim. This is not a normal report. Most are not written in such a almost cynically biased manner. Three short paragraphs, taking up half a page. ...All he thought I deserved in total "investigation", I guess.

There is no doubt that Detective Mayo did what he did on purpose; that he deliberately sabotaged my case. There is no doubt that the detective had more than ample time to get such a simple task done. Mayo should go to jail for what he did. He had plenty of reasonable suspicion to subpoena those damned logs, and even to engage in interviews with Jeff Capehart to determine how he knew so much more han he should have, and to investigate Phil and Melissa's harassing email more, and to in fact label this as "criminal". But he had done absolutely nothing. There is nothing written to prove that he did any such thing. For that matter, there is nothing written to actually back up the "UNFOUNDED" conclusion! He was repeatedly asked to subpoena the logs and in six months he made excuses. I just don't understand though, how someone can be so blatantly obvious in how he did nothing at all...and still get away with it. And I can't believe his supervisor still signed him off with an ok, at that. The whole thing smacks of a "guided", sabotaged case. And where things didn't make sense and I challenged him on it, he blamed the State Attorney's Office. Was I supposed to say "Oh!" and just walk away and let it go? What Mayo said of the SAO implicates them in this, as well, now! Who told Mayo to act like this?

Mayo's actions are suspicious. They are inexplicable and unreasonably justified. He abused the system to deliberately prejudice it against me, and deliberately prevented the system from allowing the due process of the law to be able to occur - something which is supposed to be guaranteed to every U.S. citizen in the Constitutional Amendments. I believe that this very thing is even legislated against Florida's own statutes, too. I want to know who gave him the idea to act in this manner, what was said to him to convince him that it was even necessary at all. Mayo's negligence and irresponsibility not only placed me into the path of harm, but shines a very bad light on the image of the entire force. What Mayo did causes the rest of us to distrust in the intentions of the local police departments.

The police are supposed to be there to help you. ...To protect you. They're not supposed to give you a hard time, and make fun of you, intimidate you, to be rude, and to treat you, the victim, like you're the criminal. I didn't deserve what happened to me. That's for certain. I went to the police for help. I got kicked in the face, instead.

I just wanted the people who were stalking me to stop. I just wanted to be protected. I went to the people who were supposed to protect me. They didn't protect me. On purpose. They didn't protect me. They helped my stalkers get away with stalking me. They helped them.

[Back to Stormspotter Todd's Blog: 'Where Did Todd Go?...On Dealing With Psychopaths & Stalking']

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