Where'd Todd Go?...
On Dealing With Psychopaths and Stalking
Chapter 4 - AN UNCOMFORTABLE SUBJECT
"The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people
but the silence over that by the good people."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
This is not going to be something that a lot of hams or public service workers will want to hear, or want to have to admit to, or to even believe. It's long. It's not going to be comfortable. It will in fact be extremely UN-comfortable. It involves popular people that many people know and like very much - hams, and public service workers, and other people who are otherwise very highly regarded and looked up to, greatly respected, admired, and believed in. ...People who do a lot for others in "favors"; and yet, who maliciously caused the harm on purpose, and people who had no clue that they were being duped but who still helped to cause the damage, nonetheless, even after having been told. ...It includes hams who volunteered for a lot of things and who made themselves available to help all, who hid behind their public service backgrounds, who along with other people in public service and in government leadership arenas, allowed themselves to get caught up in some very bad things, and who duped and encouraged other otherwise good people inside Emergency Management, the National Weather Service, and even in various police departments into believing that I was some form of a serious problem and to follow along, working together in "putting a stop" to the "Great, Powerful and Evil TODD", seriously believing that in the end they were doing the right thing.
Laws were broken. Business cards were forged. Titles were made up. Government agencies were conned. My complaints of harassment were ignored. Stories were exaggerated, important facts were left out. Gossip, rumor and slander spread rampant and unchecked or verified. Government and public officials were duped, and they were convinced into taking actions against an innocent person, and against an innocent program which encompassed the entire southeast Georgia and northeast Florida NWS-JAX County Warning Area. Everyone truly believed that what they were doing was for the right thing, for a good reason, for a good cause. No one stopped to ask for proof or verification of anything, first.
Superiors and upper echelon were left out of the loop. Actions were taken while in uniform and wearing the logos, on the clock for their agencies, and yet undocumented, under-the-table, so as to prevent the victim from being able to press charges against anyone specific, or from being able to make a claim about anything specific. But also as an additional unfortunate side effect, clueless people up on high never knew of what was going on underneath them - about the actions that were being taken in by the rogue employees which were putting themselves and their agencies at risk of even larger legal problems. Everyone did "favors" for somebody else, without verification of facts first, without filing official reports, without notification of superiors or making sure that anything that was being done was being done in the proper, official order and manner, or without checking to make sure that the civil rights of the innocent weren't being violated. All four possible levels of government became involved in the end - city, county, state, and federal. Damage has been done, and people and agencies are now committed, at fault, and responsible. They can't halt or take back what has been done. Now they have to answer for it. All they had to do at any time was ask one very simple question at every occasion: "Do you have any proof of this?"