On being Mobbed

I wake with my head hurting. In the early morning light skirting the edges of an ill-fitting piece of soundboard I reach for a flashlight, pull on a t-shirt, and step over a tangle of Ethernet cables and extension cords to locate a low-wattage air purifier that runs on a portable power station. I check the doors to the other rooms in the house, opening several of them to increase airflow and cracking a few windows. I turn the air purifier to its lowest fan setting, both to save power and to avoid the exacerbation of the audible harassment by the forced air. Whether a generator is being used to pipe dirty electricity for WiFi into the walls or sound into the ventilation system, I try to discourage its concentration to minimize the infiltration of the rogue sound and any toxic effects.

When I began spending more time in the Bay Area about a year back, a section of the fence my family built between our property and the house where the lowlife now dwells had gone missing. My relative told me how the lowlife had removed and stacked the fence board on his side of the property. That’s the fence on the north side. In The mobbers’ “World Wireless System” and hate culture in Albany, California (part 1), I wrote about how a contractor working a house that recently changed hands claimed the fencing on the south side of the house was on his relatives’ property.

Fences appear to be a focus of the manspreading in mobbing. Mobbers breach them to threaten or intimidate. They challenge them to extend. The furnace might be most easily accessed from the north side of the Albany house. Accustomed to experiencing harassment distributed by central heating and uncomfortable with the exposure of a downstairs window offering line-of-sight access to the furnace, I had the fence section restored a few months back. Doing so supplied some ground story blocking between our downstairs window and a ground story window vented with the tubing of an air-conditioning unit from the lowlife house. A second air-conditioner vents from the second story of the lowlife house, close to the former location of a heavily mobbed Comcast access point that provided television service. But you can’t take back the detailed knowledge about your household infrastructure that criminals who want to flip your house get from visual inspection, physical access to the property, or public information that could include construction plans for an improvement made decades back.

Mobbing is a good reason to be very careful about the contractors you do business with and the subcontractors and crews they hire. Mobbing appears to be a predatory practice that nets some kind of reward to those willing to force legal residents from their homes. The mobbers in Seattle boasted they would collect a “bounty” for turning over mine and even referred to it as “a professional real estate hit.” If the goal of mobbing is to encourage your departure by making your home unlivable, it’s important to be careful about who has access to household infrastructure, including your electrical and plumbing systems. When contractors work at the mobbing houses, you might also want to be aware of the trenches and tunnels dug close to the property line and within feet of your own systems. Piping could supply a useful fixed connection and all-weather attack vector from a mobbing house to the foundation and ducting of the victim property. Sabotage notwithstanding, much of the infrastructure of a home can probably be understood by the exterior location of the electrical service, the water main, and the sewer.

I finish my rounds and return to my bedroom, hoping I’ll be safe with the air purifier close by. Hours later I wake to a heated exchange that ends, “I want her out of there!” It’s Christmas.

They’ve staged exchanges like this before; it’s part of the narrative of mobbing. Just a month or two back, I woke to the lowlife in the north house saying, “I’m gonna keep doing this ’til I KILL you!” The goal is to frighten, to scare you out of your home. Realizing that a generator that a Berkeley electrician told me “makes sounds” might be the centerpiece of the mobbing scam is disconcerting. Especially when you’ve been threatened with carbon monoxide poisoning as I was when the north mobbing house owner allowed me to overhear him speculating on how close to the windows he’d have to get a generator to kill me. But by then, they’d also threatened to give me cancer and told me there was a bomb in my car, among other things. [Note 05/08/23: The empty threat of a bomb in a car that has an internal combustion engine is an example of a mobbing threat made to satisfy the malignant narcissism of the mobber and reinforce his claim of intellectual superiority over a female victim. This threat ridicules the victim’s lack of technical knowledge by frightening her with a statement of a scientific “truth.” Spark-ignition engines create kinetic energy by sparking a combustion process, in effect, intermittent explosions in the combustion chamber of a gas-fueled vehicle.]

There are the accidental carbon monoxide poisoning deaths you hear about on the news every winter, the ones where the cause of the demise remains uncertain—possible problems with the heater, no carbon-monoxide detector or one that somehow malfunctioned or lacked a battery, nothing indicating a suspicious death. But while carbon monoxide might be the more familiar threat, if a generator is in use the mobbers may be contaminating the victim environment by distributing energy in the form of direct current, probably “dirty electricity,” which is also called “electrical pollution.” Dirty electricity is the common term for electrical current that does not conform to the “pure sine wave” electricity that the power utility provides but refuses to adequately monitor at the service drop and the meter. A characteristic of dirty electricity is the presence of high-frequency voltage transients riding over 50/60 Hertz (Hz) electric current. [Note 08/16/23: My mother, who became increasingly cold after developing lung disease and elevated the thermostat ever higher in the last years of her life, complained that the smoke detector positioned above her bedroom door was faulty and was always going off. In Seattle I became so wary of the venting from the house of the south mobbing owner that I purchased a carbon-monoxide detector. The Seattle house is all electric; no gas service.]

In the case of a generator, the sound waves might ride atop the direct current—perhaps the carrier current—or might be focused on your electrical service, the household wiring that creates its own antenna effect, or the electrical components of distributors within the victim home by WiFi access points or extenders. But even if the primary component they’re piping into your walls is dirty electricity and not carbon-monoxide, there’s probably lethal potential. It’s probably possible to displace enough oxygen to kill by circulating other matter, especially if the victim is breathing through the tubing of a CPAP device, or to interfere with battery-powered medical devices like oxygen providers. My waking with severe dizziness after seeking refuge in the basement of my Seattle home came after an hours-long barrage of sound and a subterranean cloud of matter filtered through early morning light.

If a victim of mobbing is old enough or has poor enough hearing, she won’t hear the harmonics on the machine and if she does, she may not suspect their meaning. Because her neighbors are friendly and might even hold well-respected positions in medicine, technology, or with the city, she doesn’t consider they might have anything to do with the odd behavior. And because no one believes the mobbing victim, no one will believe the mobbing victim or anyone else who witnesses the malevolence underway and tries to report the concerning condition of an electrical disturbance on an oxygen provider. This is another case in which a cogent report made in an attempt to protect others adversely affects the reporter, especially when a nearby block coordinator or neighborhood watch captain defames the reporter by making false reports or influencing police into regarding the reporter as suspicious. No one looks for the power generator next door to the victim’s home, it’s unlikely that investigators check for signs of electrical interference, for hidden pipes running underground or venting in the wrong direction between neighboring houses, or for air-conditioning or exhaust units from next door that vent onto or within close proximity to windows through which most RF enters our homes, like the fanned exhaust vent that was lowered and centered on the half-light of my Seattle kitchen door by the south house mobbing owner.

The illicit injection of direct current into a victim home—probably a crude form of wireless power transfer—likely adversely interacts with electric components in the victim home and creates electrical interference. I attempted to mitigate the effects of what I suspected to be radio frequency (RF) leaking from my outlets based on an illicit powerline connection by using EMF filters. EMF filters use capacitors, which store power via a spark gap—two air-gapped conductors of opposing polarity. In my case, the filters appeared to excite ill effects rather than ameliorate them. Perhaps that would happen in a case where infrastructure is the target of direct current power transfer. I tested outlets to ensure I used the capacitors on correctly wired circuits but ultimately found that shutting down power at the circuit breaker interrupts the transfer of at least some sound into the house and provides the greatest amelioration. Channeling the substrate for the pressure waves or the rogue sound itself through heating vents results in the infiltration of the victim home and exacerbates the mobbing. This is why mobbing victims like me resort to using carefully selected space heaters that are less likely to function as radiators pelting electrical interference. If the target is household ventilation systems and vents, the illicit transfer might be attended by increased indoor air pollution from cooking smells, debris, and even toxic matter traveling in the wrong direction. Like that neglected coaxial and that forgotten Cat-5, flues and furnaces old and new are just more infrastructure awaiting the mobbers’ use. That’s not Santa in your chimney! Ho ho ho!

Unknowing mobbing victims may conclude that their homes are in need of extensive repairs for problems that somehow never occur when contractor estimators are present and may sell to the sympathetic builder working an adjacent lot or be counseled to sell by a socially engineering neighbor who intends to profit off of the sale. Mobbing victims who join neighborhood social networks like Nextdoor may be further encouraged to sell by deliberately planted horror stories about neighborhood concerns including death and taxes or plague and pestilence.

Since the January 6 attack on the Capitol, we’ve been forced to consider the use of social media as a propaganda tool. Hate groups are not the only organizations using social media to achieve their ends; the real estate industry is quick to adopt the latest-and-greatest channels for social marketing and sales communications. Social media presents an opportunity for those “thought leaders” and “influencers” to offer some gentle persuasion to the fold. (For an article on the continuing relevance of George Orwell’s “1984,” see Professor Mark Satta’s piece on The Conversation.) Real estate speculators’ use of social media is insidious; they may engage in some of the most devious and deceptive attempts to manipulate a home owner into becoming a home seller. “That garden sure is a lot of work. Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in a condo?” “I found a rats’ nest in the yard.” “Someone broke into my car!” “We just had a great experience with a real estate agent!” The culture of sales runs amok. Human relationships are reduced to potential transactions. Transparency is supplanted with a damaging and even dangerous duplicity. Home owners who bought charming homes in once friendly neighborhoods find they’ve bought into an investment club.

This is what is enabled when corrupt neighborhood watch and coordinators call on their cop friends to intimidate you out of your home, when men tell the police and the courts that women who report them are delusional and the defamatory lies go unquestioned. This is what it’s like when you live in towns like Albany or Seattle where most of the elected believe in the constitution, in civil rights, and in women rights—at least in the abstract—but they have the remove of policy-makers; they don’t run the city. It’s like when the inspector came out to look at the motion-detecting light on the side of the north mobbing house owner’s house in Seattle and told me that these are the kinds of people who take up lawsuits against the city. Is it fear of such lawsuits that stops the city from protecting residents from being battered in their homes, falsely prosecuted at the behest of corrupt neighborhood watch groups and criminal speculators, or even murdered to force property to sale? Is it out of fear of lawsuits that cities look the other way while women with legal contracts are battered by criminal appointees to city positions? All they have to do is tell the city or the courts that a woman is crazy and cogent reports of a tech-enabled crime are read as signs of a mental illness with which a woman has never been afflicted. This is all it takes for a woman’s reports of harassment by radio to be deflected as schizophrenia, for her reports of the involvement of neighbors and the neighborhood watch or coordinator to be ridiculed as the usual paranomaniacal fears of black helicopters and governments. This is all it takes to create a hate crime or criminal real estate scam that finds its success in sexism.

The next day I sleep through daybreak harassment until after 7:00am, when it gets to me in the middle of a dream through pillow and earplugs. Bone conduction. I roll over, remove the earplugs and try to keep sleeping on my side with my ears turned from the pillow. I hear the churning of a subterranean motor accompanied by the persistent garbled sound of a broadcast. I leave the bed to set up the power station with the air purifier. I close a window or two that was cracked open and open a few doors that were not. I stop to listen and change the position of the air purifier once more. The main breaker is off and the power station is shielded from the windows by interior walls.

The sound is persistent. My eustacian tubes swell; my ears begin to ring. The hot sting of some low-voltage substrate for pressure waves pelts my cheeks. The heat sinks into my airways and settles into my lungs. I lay in bed close to outlets known to leak radio frequency under powerline connection.

It’s the day after Christmas. After I get up and dress, I grab a flashlight and the keys to the basement and find my way to the main electrical panel. The main breaker snaps into the ON position, then I enable a few other circuits to meet my minimum needs for heat, light, air, refrigeration, communications and power stores. I’ll turn them all off again before bed. I’ve spent yet another year being verbally abused and battered by criminal profiteers who expect to be able to take what they want from a woman who lives alone. Mobbing is lucrative sport and a way to get some punches in while you’re at it. You may not be able to roll back rights in the Supreme Court, but you can do it on the block. The City of Albany, California allows it. So does the City of Seattle, Washington. [Note 05/09/22: Allow me to correct myself—as the leaked draft opinion on Roe v. Wade shows, the rights of women can be rolled back in the Supreme Court as well as on the block. Perhaps our property rights are next. And if you strip us of the right to vote, we won’t be able to vote you out of office. The Constitution never mentioned women.]

We must draw the line somewhere. Taking action on complaints that city-appointed block coordinators and captains are involved in forced eviction using civil and criminal harassment would be a start. Acknowledging how the lack of community accountability these coordinators and captains enjoy scaffolds bias and corruption into local government might be a first step. The fact remains that, at least in America, women’s hard-fought rights to hold contracts and acquire a mortgage don’t matter. A woman who keeps a home risks her life.

Ω

Experimenting with household infrastructure marked a turning point in being mobbed, both in Seattle and in Albany. Coming to understand the involvement of the infrastructure that supports communications services in harassment allowed me to strip the coaxial cable, the Cat-5 once used for DSL and the landline, the AT&T NID and the cable box from the house, and led to my realization that I had to disconnect the data cable running from the AT&T ONT to the router. Understanding the involvement of my electrical service in the harassment, despite the failure of Seattle City Light and PG&E to adequately consider what I’ve told them about a significant vulnerability, allowed me to strategically cut my use of electricity and experiment not only with my AC electric service, but with DC power.

Early automobiles did not use batteries. With bells for horns and gas-powered lights, they didn’t need them. Cars like the two-cylinder Citroën 2CV (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_2CV), designed in the years before World War II, were sold with cranks to turn the flywheel and offered crank-starting in addition to electric start until the model was discontinued in 1990. But crank-starting was tricky, even dangerous, and by 1920, automobiles manufactured and sold with electric starter motors were increasingly common. Hand-cranks for the 2CV remain available as aftermarket parts.

Automotive batteries discharge DC power in one direction, through the positive terminal to the negative. Automotive components require the DC charge to function, but the DC charge of the battery is finite. The problem of exhausting the power supply of an automotive battery is solved by the alternator, a belt-driven generator that produces alternating current. The generated AC current replenishes the charge of the DC battery that is required to power the car.

Most of the devices and appliances we use inside our homes are also DC-powered. But the supply of electricity to our homes is alternating current because it can travel further over power lines with minimal loss. Transformers step the voltage down to a level compatible with residential use, and nearly all appliances then convert the AC power to DC for consumption. We plug a refrigerator built for the American market, for example, into an outlet that supplies 120 volts of alternating current. But most motors are driven by DC current. In the United States, we use an electrical distribution topology of alternating current for the long-distance distribution of power. The alternating current is converted into direct current through a process called “rectification”; the DC power drives the refrigerator compressor and the low-voltage fan motors. A component that converts DC to AC is called an inverter (“Compatibility of household appliances with DC microgrid for PV systems,” ScienceDirect, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844020325421).

Alternating current is converted into direct current through the process of rectification. The process of rectification, achieved by a regulator, is designed into the electrical systems of household appliances and devices that require direct current. This is usually a regulator built into the power supply of devices like computers, that use a DC bus, or devices whose motors require DC current. Power supplies can be designed as linear or switching; the switching mode power supply (SMPS) is more energy efficient than the linear mode regulator that sheds excess electric power as heat (“Switched-mode power supply,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched-mode_power_supply).

Certain features of SMPS may be relevant to in-home harassment on your devices. SMPS regulators that are poorly designed or made may not adequately filter the high-amplitude, high-frequency energy created in switching mode. Electromagnetic interference and harmonic frequencies can result. SMPS regulators introduce noise and interference that cannot be reduced without RF shielding. The noise from the electrical switching can travel back to household power and interfere with A/V equipment. Noise and interference are foundational tools in mobbing. It’s difficult to read about the appliances with SMPS in my environment without thinking about how they could be exploited in mobbing and whether their exploitation in my environment could begin to explain the perception of interference generated when, for example, data is being received over Ethernet while the power cord is engaged, or perhaps even the stinging or cutting sensation as I look at a monitor when rogue sound may be being received as video. Maybe it could explain the drying and chafing of the skin of my hands where the palms rest on the trackpad. Perhaps it could even explain how the rogue sound so easily makes the transition from the AC power to a DC-connected device.

Electronic devices that use SMPS may use a DC bus. This feature is particularly interesting when you consider how mobbing harassment is expressed in an automobile using a Controller Area Network (CAN) bus that includes a 12-volt pin. In the tidy commuter car I own from which I removed the Blue&Me entertainment module to ameliorate the mobbing harassment, the Blue&Me module connects to the CAN bus (Blue, the mobbers & me (part 1) and Blue, the mobbers & me (part 2)). The CAN bus serves as a DC bus that is used to deliver DC power for low-voltage charging using the Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard. The power banks that are typically available and that I have used to mitigate the ill effects of the mobbing harassment supply multiple interfaces for power-in and power-out including DC and USB (“The CAN Bus Protocol Tutorial,” https://www.kvaser.com/can-protocol-tutorial/“).

Electric vehicles use electric-vehicle batteries (EVB), typically rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. The automotive batteries that internal-combustion engines use are called starting, lighting and ignition (SLI) batteries because their current starts the electric start motor, which then starts the gas-powered internal combustion engine that moves the vehicle. EVBs are deep-cycle batteries that deliver power for a sustained period of time. EVBs are recharged using conductive coupling or inductive charging. In conductive coupling requires a direct electrical connection. This method might require connecting high-capacity cables to a weatherproof socket on the vehicle. Inductive charging requires a magnetic circuit that is completed when a specialized “paddle” that is one winding of a transformer is inserted into a matching window built into the vehicle to be charged. Electric vehicle (EV) chargers are generally not designed for security; numerous articles call attention to the exploits these IoT devices enable. For example, the UK security company Pen Test Partners found vulnerabilities in five of six tested brands that allowed bad actors who hijack user accounts, to interfere with the charging process, and even to make the charger into a “backdoor” to the owner’s network (“Security flaws found in popular EV chargers,” https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/03/security-flaws-found-in-popular-ev-chargers/). “EV charging security is a shit show” reads the headline of Cate Lawrence’s TNW News article. “It’s disturbing that white hats found some of the most rudimentary security elements lacking. These include the absence of API authorization and firmware signing.” Lawrence continues, “EV charging is the poster child of a security problem with potential attacks via mobile apps, firmware updates, and physical access points” (“EV charging security is a shit show: EV charging networks are playgrounds for hackers,” https://thenextweb.com/news/ev-charging-is-a-security-disaster).

EV chargers are part of the IoT ecosystem, an environment populated by devices whose interactions are more likely to be understood within the context of an exploit than before they are released to market. A December 2020 article in ISP News discusses the likelihood that powerline adapters disrupt the European MG ZS EV from charging. In this case, the use of the HomePlug standard devices prevented the charging process. “The problem appears to occur with all sorts of different smart Wall Chargers (OHME, Rolec, etc.), as well as so-called ‘granny cables’ (i.e. plugging your car in via a normal 3-pin UK power socket). Likewise, it’s been triggered by various different Powerline adapters from companies such as NETGEAR, TP-Link and the Solwise AV2 etc. In all cases, unplugging the adapters solved the charging problem.” (“Powerline Based WiFi Extenders May Disrupt MS ZS EV Car Charging UPDATE,” https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/12/powerline-based-wifi-extenders-may-disrupt-mg-zs-ev-car-charging.html). An MG spokesperson commented as follows: “Wi-Fi extenders can cause ‘noise’ in the electrical system of a property which may cause interference with the charging cycle of an electric vehicle.” A bit further down, I saw the comment of Ian Louden who is probably associated with the www.ban-plt.org.uk group he cites and that I mentioned in an earlier writing: “Powerline networking (PLT) is an unethical technology which causes serious problems for radiocommunications. Despite the non-compliant nature of the technology with established internationally agreed limits for interference, the European Commission has permitted the industry to continue with impunity to the EMC Directive, leading to speculation of corruption within the Commission itself.”

The MG ZS charging issue is focused on interference from powerline adapters preventing the charging process. I have not seen an article that describes, for example, the distribution of power from a power store over WiFi extenders and powerline adapters that have been maliciously deployed onto a neighbor’s power service but given the right combination of bad actors, IoT management apps, and signal boosting, many things are possible. The last comment to come in on the topic was from Tim Hague: “What do you expect when RF is induced onto unscreened power lines? Home wiring was never designed to carry HF RF. [Power extenders] obtained their CE certification by the back door and cause interference to other services, not only on the fundamental but with harmonics and intermodulation products.”

Bengt Halvorson’s 2020 article in Green Car Reports, “Study: Electric cars and pacemakers are a safe combination—with some precautions,” reviews research on the safety of EV charging. The Technical University of Munich study analyzed the effect of electromagnetic fields and potential electromagnetic interference on pacemakers. The takeaway is that the low power electric fields of running battery-driven vehicles are not a problem for pacemakers, but high-power DC fast charging might be (“Study: Electric cars and pacemakers are a safe combination—with some precautions,” https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1127809_study-electric-cars-and-pacemakers-are-a-safe-combination-with-some-precautions).

All in all, if the mobbers are competing with you over the DC microgrid they’ve extended for control of your devices, there may be no rhyme or reason to the behavior of your devices and the unnerving behavior of the electrical circuits in your home. It’s Mary the Widow being taken advantage of by contractors who not only want her cash but will take her home as well. “Oh! It must be a poltergist! We’ll have to sell.” And once more, we’re back to “haunted houses” whose owners are only too happy to sell to predatory speculators.

There is, however, an alternate theory of expulsion, and that is FOO. We’ll have to talk about that in part 4 since my little car had a bit of FOO that kept me from entirely completing this merry missive on this second evening after Christmas.

Ω

Made witness to the collusion of the lowlife to the north and a woman I believed to be an Albany neighborhood watch block captain, in mid-July I wrote the following to the Albany City Council:

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“I would like to see discussion of the neighborhood watch program. I believe Albany should withdraw from it to mitigate biased policing and to better support social justice. I have first-hand experience with a block watch captain in Albany—and there are probably more—engaging in criminal harassment of neighbors in an apparent drive to turn over houses for real estate speculation. I doubt this is an isolated case and such cases also involve nuisance and false reports to police, taking advantage of the relationship between block watch and police to enlist the police in harassing neighbors. This is a form of corruption. Block watch coordinators and captains are not responsible to the community. Block watch organizations are known to become vigilante groups and their status as block watch organizers shields their bad deeds. In the end, these groups are a liability for the cities that sponsor them. The organization is anachronistic and not conducive to social justice in the neighborhood. Surely there is a better way to engage the community.”

“What do I need to do to get this on the agenda?”

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I received a response from Sid Schoenfeld, the Neighborhood & Community Services Manager, saying that the City of Albany “does not currently sponsor a formal neighborhood watch program. The city provides a number of resources including helping a neighborhood that wants safety awareness trainings/meetings host one. We also engage the community through neighborhood outreach with resources that promote emergency preparedness and human services.”

The back-and-forth is tedious but instructive when it comes to understanding the absolute inability to report harassment by city-appointed volunteers who may or may not expressly be paid and serve as representatives of the city. I responded to Mr. Schoenfeld by telling him: “My information is taken from the Albany Police website. For example, the following page.” I copied and pasted in the link to the neighborhood watch page that I recall expressed the Albany Police aspiration to have a watch coordinator or captain on every block in this small town. Mr. Schoenfeld responded to tell me that the information advertising the neighborhood watch program was outdated. I wrote again, pointing out that the page included a message dated July 6th and remained active on the site. I asked when the program was changed to eliminate community policing. A response from Mr. Schoenfeld then advised me that a “Neighborhood Services Program” was started in 2018 with neighborhoods “given the opportunity to make engagement opportunities” with “City Emergency Services Departments” under the aegis of the new program. At least that page on the City of Albany website has now been updated. The link itself still references the “neighborhood watch.”

Before Mr. Schoenfeld acknowledged, at least indirectly, that a neighborhood watch program existed before it was apparently revamped in 2018, I had an exchange with an Albany City Council member who insisted there was no such program in Albany, then said the “our neighborhood watch program is based on disaster prep and building strong neighborhood alliances.” There was more but the statements were generally confusing as the council member took the lead in responding to my concerns and request for review of the watch program to “close this out.” The New York Times reported the FBI finding that “[p]ersonal attacks motivated by bias or prejudice reached a 16-year high in 2018 (“Hate-Crime Violence Hits 16-Year High, F.B.I. Reports,” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/hate-crimes-fbi-report.html). Given the rise of hate during the years of Trump and since the 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin at the hands of an over-zealous “community watch” member who aspired to policing, I imagine the concept was becoming less and less politic.

Given the fact that the Albany Police website continued to advertise and recruit for a neighborhood watch program until after I began to write about the improper contact of the “block coordinator” across the street from me, the assertion that the neighborhood watch was replaced by a different program in 2018 is problematic. Not to mention the fact that I was being harassed in Albany in the same manner that I now know involves multiple neighbors including a “block coordinator” involved in a systematic effort to “clear” their neighbors from their homes, most likely for some kind of profit that would be the outcome of real estate deals. In the interests of transparency, further information should be available on Albany’s transition from “neighborhood watch” to “neighborhood services,” to clarify the changes to the program, its funding and oversight, and whether the current “block coordinators” are the “watch captains” of the past. Getting the information I did was like pulling teeth. This should not be the case.

At any rate, it doesn’t matter so much what you call unelected volunteers who are put into intermediary positions between local government, police, the fire department and the neighbors they scheme against. The point is that these volunteers are put into a positions that allow close relationships with those their victims depend on for city services including ambulance, fire, and police. The notion of biased or corrupt first responders is even more disturbing. Unelected volunteers may exert influence over how their victims receive services and how their victims are perceived by those city employees who distribute services. And when city employees become disaffected, if they become corrupt or are unable to neutrally perform their jobs or actively seek to subvert the community values with which they disagree, city employees may be able to enlist unelected volunteers in improper behavior by sharing kickbacks or promising them special treatment. It doesn’t matter what you call these unelected volunteers. But it does matter when the complaints their victims can scarcely risk making about their racketeering, neighbor battering, and predatory real estate scams fall on deaf ears. The result is a dichotomy in which elected officials sponsor committees on diversity while hate rules the block.

Ω

Stay tuned for part 4 of The mobbers’ “World Wireless System” and hate culture in Albany, California (part 1).