Where'd Todd Go?...
On Dealing With Psychopaths and Stalking
Chapter 22 - MY "DELIVERANCE"
In his poem "Marmion", Sir Walter Scott once wrote, "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." Sir Scott was attempting to convey to the reader how habitual liars often get caught by dealing out so many lies that it becomes difficult to keep track of them all. ...How when you involve so many people, very often the people themselves become too difficult to control, as well. ...Someone gets drunk, or overconfident, or feels betrayed. Someone talks. Someone brags. Maybe one person even gets caught. Now they want to talk. Now they want a "deal". That person spews and names more names. Those people get caught. They spew more names. ...And so on.
So then, how loyal ARE you? Are you willing to go down with the ship for your "captain"? Are you willing to take the heat for your captain? Willing to lose your home, your paycheck, your job, your assets, your benefits? Are these idiots that worth it to you? This very effect, this very fear of a very volatile thing that cannot be controlled...is what now keeps most everyone in line. They're all liable now and could even go to jail for the things that have been done to me and they know it and they're just praying and hoping that everybody else in the line is able to stand fast and not screw it all up for the rest of them.
Believe it or not, there IS some incredible satisfaction in fact in knowing that so many people and even entire agencies are controlled by this. ..."Chinese handcuffs." That's what this is. Everybody relaxes and plays it cool, and everybody is okay. But if just one joker PLAYS AROUND...the noose tightens for everyone. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place.
Words about "living with one's self" don't work, here. Fear of getting caughtdoes, however.
Jeff wouldn't leave me alone by simply asking. Then I actually called the police on him. The fact that I actually did that is what finally actually made him stop (or at least to hide better). So I've learned that he does understand the emotion of fear.
I threatened putting this blog up for years to try to get Jeff to stop what he was doing to me and Jeff repeatedly told me that to do so would do no good. "It's all in who you know, he would say. "...You know nobody. We know everybody who is important. Who are you going to go to? What are you going to say? No one is going to listen to you. They won't believe you." He was also keen to add that I could be sued for slander. Well, I'm still waiting to be sued by anyone for slander...including by Jeff Capehart. That's what he wanted me to believe. In actuality, in real live practice however, just the opposite seems to be occurring. No one wants to touch this, no one is coming to the rescue of the hams, and everyone went from threats to keeping their mouths shut.
...And this is bad for me...HOW, again? Oh, bullshit. Quite the opposite is actually happening, here. I'm kicking my enemy's ass is what I'm doing. ...And they know it.
This blog is my "Declaration of Independence", if you will.
Yehuda Bauer wrote a book, published in 2011, The Legacy of the Holocaust, which summed up the lessons learned from the Holocaust. On page 57, he makes mention of three "commandments" that people should hold to in order to prevent the recurrance of the kind of evil that had occurred back then:
"Thou shall not be a perpetrator.
Thou shall not be a victim.
And thou shall never, but never, be a bystander."
The perpetrators started everything and created the victims.
...But the most sickening, disgusting, and EVIL people involved in this whole thing were the bystanders who knew what was happening and who said nothing and who let it all happen to an innocent person while turning their heads away and holding up their hands. These people are worse than the perpetrators.
If only people had heeded those commandments during the events that happened to me, the future would be a whole different thing than what it is right now...for everybody. I don't know what I could have personally done to have prevented myself from becoming a victim at the time that it was happening - considering how everyone did what they did in secret without my knowledge. However, post-hysteria, this blog became the one weapon to make it all stop dead in its tracks once I began to discover what the heck was actually going on.
The existence of this blog guarantees me a few things:
While it won't stop everything, it stops most of the more obvious harassers and harassments.
It calls attention to everything - attention my harassers don't want. Whether people believe it or not doesn't matter. The people who caused the problems now know that they're on notice and in the spotlight and they have to act good to in order to try to make me look wrong; and if I can't at least bring these people to justice in a courtroom, then this is the next best thing, because while they're acting good, they're not causing me, or my friends, or my family any harm.
Of those who did cause me problems: people in NWS, FDEM, ACOEM, GPD, UPD, UF, ACSO, GARS, GARC, the ARRL... The same applies.
I complained to everyone and got nowhere. If something ever happens to me now - a car accident, I get mugged, I get shot, or whatever...this blog is out there and someone can find it, and someone could ask questions. Like...someone in the Press, perhaps? There will forevermore be the possibility of inquiries, investigations. My harassers don't want that, and again, this guarantees they'll be on their best behavior as long as the blog exists. They'll be too busy trying to appear and actually BE ever so nice and to make me look like I'm the nutcase complainer than to dare causing me any more actual problems while this thing exists. So again, I win. (Unless you're Melissa Royce, in which case, you'll see this as a challenge, and actually try to cause more harm just because I said that this document guarantees that no one can cause me harm...which actually, I didn't say. But Melissa is Melissa and Forrest Gump said it best: "Stupid is as Stupid does." Everybody else at least has the brains enough to know better.)
The cop in GPD who deliberately sabotaged my harassment case based upon gossip and rumor rather than any actual investigating is scared stiff and on notice and on his best behavior and doesn't want this to get out. Jeff Capehart knew everything that this man said to Phil and Melissa and he parroted it all back to me and this cop will forever have to live in fear that Jeff Capehart knows something about what he did and that's just fine with me. The cop was told who the bad guys were. The cop made a personal guess rather than a fact-based conclusion, and he guessed wrong and caused me harm. He's going to have to live with the consequences of that, now, and forever be on his guard to not accidentally admit or say the wrong thing someday. I'm fine with that. Someday I will have this man's home for what he did to me.
The cops in UPD who keystone-copped the investigation of the AC-EMWIN server hacking by Jeff Capehart are scared stiff and on notice and on their best behavior and they don't want this to get out. They're already denying that they and I had any interaction regarding the case at all, or even that the case existed. The fact that they missed the Gainesville Sun article archive about how Jeff and his wife once hacked into the UF IFAS computer in their past, showing a propensity for doing just what I had said he did, is testimony to how irresponsible that agency is. And so, the entire University Police Department is on notice, too, and open to possible investigation if they make big enough waves.
Dave Donnelly, who denied me access to a meeting held about me and Alachua County SKYWARN in violation of my civil and Due Process rights, and who took sanctions against me without allowing me to hear who my accusers were or to answer in my own defense, who inappropriately interfered with a police investigation and convinced a cop at GPD that I was the bad guy instead of the victim, and who did the same with a hacking investigation involving UPD, and who used Alachua County Office of Emergency Management to try to take over another organization that did not belong to him, and to dictate how it was run, and who attempted to use his power and authority to take equipment that did not belong to him...is scared stiff and on notice.
Chief William May, who was told that people in his agency were harassing and stalking me and who blew me off, and where those people later caused me even more problems even using the name of the Alachua Co. Office of Emergency Management...could be sued as well because of what he did.
Angie Enyedi, Al Sandrik, Steve Letro, of NWS-JAX, took gossip and rumor and slander from local hams as fact without first checking to VERIFY what they were hearing and then took some very serious actions which caused other agencies to take their OWN actions and sanctions against me and Alachua County SKYWARN, all of which caused me, my friends, and my family very serious harm...and they're scared stiff about what could happen, too.
Everywhere, people screwed up...badly...and by everyone's irresponsible actions, harm came to me, and to my friends, and my family. Everyone is linked, one to the next in responsibility...in a long chain of word, and then action, resulting in harm. The hams spread gossip. The NWS took it seriously. The NWS convinced other agencies to stand with them in taking actions. ACOEM convinced GPD that I was a problem. GPD sabotaged a case. The ham who was in control of all of the gossip and slander himself hacked into the EMWIN server, and then caused UPD to believe that I was the problem, not him. Various hams stalked and harassed me and I went to many organizations and agencies and complained and none of them did a thing and my harassers caused more harm, and those agencies are responsible now.
But at the root of it all is NWS-JAX. Without their root actions none of the other agencies would have been made to believe that I was the problem and not my harassers. NWS-JAX guessed wrong, and had real meetings, denied me access and denied me chance to defend myself, which violated my civil rights, and as a result, the National Weather Service itself is most responsible in all of this and NWS Headquarters in DC doesn't even have a clue that they are because their employees in Jax didn't tell anyone higher up about it! The NWS is going to be hit with quite a surprise at some point in time here.
And you can apply this same thing with Alachua County Office of Emergency Management. Does Steve Abrams know? Does DC know? Is ACOEM hiding this from these people? If they do know, why haven't I had any phone calls? So, ACOEM is keeping it's mouth shut, as is NWS-JAX.
As for what happened with UPD and how they screwed up the hacking investigation and then tried to hide it...what's gonna happen when the University of Florida President finds out? Think he'll be happy? UPD has so many IAD problems already going on right now, and this is just one more...and it's pretty huge. It's...a hacking...and UPD is covering it up?!!! Just how is the UF President supposed to answer to that unwanted inherited fubar? I think he'd be embarrassed. I think he'd be angry. I think he'd want heads.
This is all a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off, now. A lot of people are responsible and don't want to be found out. A lot of huge mistakes were made...irresponsible and inexplicable mistakes...which brings each of their agencies under scrutiny, and their reputations under attack. These people will eventually have to answer for what they did, and to explain it all. They won't be able to. Not reasonably. Not logically. Not in any way that shows prudent care for my civil rights at all steps. A lot of really bad stuff has happened, now. ...Things which cannot be taken back and which commits everyone to an unmistakable responsibility for what they did. ...Things that a lot of people who I'm sure meant well in the beginning are now having to turn dark side about in order to cover their asses. And you know what they say about the "road to Hell." Their upper echelons had no clue what they were doing. They took the actions that they did on their own, with no signatures, no paperwork. ...And yet the NWS, and FDEM, will want to know how all of this could have happened and gone so far without any paperwork to back it up, and no official complaints filed against Todd, or against Alachua County SKYWARN. I'm sure they'll want to know why this man was so persecuted, and roped, and hung, and an entire County Warning Area's innocent civilian spotter program unfairly held hostage in punishment, and how yet...there is nothing to back it up, and why all queries about it only result in "That's official [NWS] / [Emergency Management] business only!" The agencies that these people are a part of are now open to lawsuit and attack, and while caught in the middle of all of the fireworks, those agencies will want to know why it's all happening, and what the heck is going on.
For these reasons, no. NO one will ever challenge this blog. This blog will remain. It will never come down.
There will be NO court appearances. There will be NO orders from Judges to remove this blog because to get one means to drag this whole thing into a courtroom where by it's nature a court appearance means bringing it out into open public record. And again, these people really don't want that.
So again, I win.
Trust me. I know damned well just exactly what I'm doing here with this blog. This blog is in effect my Bill of Rights, and guarantees me my life back in at least some semblance. If the stalkers don't like that, they can go to hell. I really don't give a rats ass what anyone thinks anymore. I can't afford to stop and think about that. It's a waste of time and serves no purpose except to just make me even more depressed and I'm not gonna do that. My entire life has been turned upside-down; my name, and my entire reputation have been completely destroyed by these assholes. They attacked, affected, and frightened my friends, my family, my professional associations and contacts. I lost a home, rental income, and other assets because of the numerous cops who sabotaged every case I ever filed and who altered my statements. The cops did that because an Emergency Manager crossed a line and suggested that I was stalking and harassing others when in fact he didn't actually know if that was true or or not. All the "insane" lines have already been crossed. Nothing else shocks me anymore. What makes them think I'd still care what anyone really thinks of me at this point? I mean, get real! Aside from physically harming me or any of the people in my circle next, what the hell else can these people possibly DO to me? They've already done it all! I've learned to stop caring about certain things that people say and do. You have to...to keep your sanity. You have no choice. With this blog, I can stop talking, I can stop complaining, because the blog does it for me. All someone has to do is type in my name, or any one of my harasser's names, and there it is...risk of it ALL being found out. And this guarantees everyone stays under control. Meanwhile, I'm here at home, resting peacefully, living out my life happily, enjoying the world and everything in it and around me...which is just exactly what these people didn't want me to do. They wanted me to cave, to crumble, to cower, to run, to hide, to scurry away, to shrivel up and die. ...And I didn't. I'm sure that pisses them off to no end, and that pleases ME to no end. If they wanted me to cry, repeatedly, over and over, endlessly...well, kudos to them there because that did happen for quite the long while; and now and then it still happens. But I'm learning now how to get control back, and how to deal with it all, and to survive through it regardless. And that's exactly what I'm doing with this blog.
It's not the victory that I want. The bad guys at this point in time AREN'T being brought to justice. They, up to this point, do indeed get away with everything that they did. And in that sense, they did indeed win. But, at least for now, finally, I am on top, and have some semblance of control of my life again.
Psychopaths..."bullies" (for those of you who don't like words like "psychopath" and "sociopath")...rule by intimidation, and fear of humiliation and embarrassment, and by convincing you that you are worthless, and by controlling your whole world - everything around you...how you react to everything, how people react to you. Until you realize this, and try to stand up for yourself, they will always be in your life, always there, continuing to cause you problems. They don't have mercy. They don't know what that word means. They consider us humans with conscience and merciful ideas to be weak, and gullible, and actually deserving of the problems that end up happening to us by their hands. So it then becomes up to you. If you don't do anything to intervene, then they will continue to attack you, to interfere in your personal life, and to destroy everything in your world. To stop them, you have to call attention to them. Even then, they still don't stop. They just go into the next mode...creating something called "alibi" to counter your claims. ...Volunteering, and doing "kind" things for people, and making people believe that they're good, so as to contradict everything that you say about them, and also to make you look like an evil monster...(again). But then again at least, while they're busy doing good things, then they're doing good things, and not attacking you. See? For the first time in the entire battle, you've actually learned how to gain something of a control of them, and you suddenly realize...you've turned the tables a little.
These are but some of the really weird things that you'll have to think about, and some of the really weird choices and compromises that you'll have to end up making when dealing with these kinds of people.
My life has always been hard. I was born to a family that didn't make a whole lot of money. I had some relatives who were often cruel. I've been bullied many times before in my life. I never took the dark path, though. I knew what it was like to be treated badly and I never wished ill will on anyone else, or tried to bring same to anyone. I'd often been treated unfairly by people and so I knew how I would not like to be treated and I never treated others badly or unfairly. I've always tried to be fair, understanding, to give people chances, and to forgive where possible. It's not in me to treat other people badly...for whatever reason. I've always wanted to believe that even though the bad may number in the higher percentages around us, that the few good who remained actually mattered. For this reason, I have always endeavored to do good things, however insignificant, to try to help people. The things I've done never usually made the news, but I've done a lot, quietly, to try to help people in my own small ways. I had always hoped that what I did mattered, anyway. I'd always hoped that history would remember me in a good way. What I never counted on...was that it would depend upon whose version of history was written, and that my history could be rewritten by the bad people to actually make everything that I'd worked so hard to do for people actually seem villainous and evil. When others have so much power, what reason then is there to keep trying, or even to continue on?
"Theirs not to make reply
Theirs not to reason why
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the Valley of Death rode the 600."
Writing a summary in high school on Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, football player Michael Oher, recently made famous in the movie The Blind Side wrote the following:
"Courage is a hard thing to figure. You can have courage based on a dumb idea, or a mistake; but you're not supposed to question adults, or your coach, or your teacher because they make the rules. Maybe they know best, but maybe they don't. It all depends on who you are, where you come from. Didn't at least one of the 600 guys think about giving up and joining with the other side? I mean, 'Valley of Death', that's pretty salty stuff. That's why courage is tricky. Should you always do what others tell you to do? Sometimes, you might not even know *why* you're doing something. I mean, any fool can have courage. But honor, that's the real reason you either do something or you don't. It's who you are, and maybe who you want to be. If you die trying for something important, then you have both honor and courage, and that's pretty good. I think that's what the writer was saying. ...That you should hope for courage and try for honor; and maybe even pray that the people telling you what to do have some, too."
A lot of these words made perfect sense to me.
I had a good idea. It was just a few jealous people in the ham radio corps who didn't like it. They went out of their way to try to force me to do things their way by trying to convince other people - through persistent antagonization - that I was being unreasonable, or stupid, and to try to persuade them to convince me to come to their way of thinking. Where they couldn't control me, they always tried to attack my friends and/or associations. Most of the time it didn't work (with the civilians, anyway). But when they went to people in government - in emergency management, the NWS, and even in the local police - then, for some odd reason, something that shouldn't have happened at all did, and logic and reason, and all the safeguards failed, and the whole world became backwards and upside-down. After being conned by the bad hams, a lot of people around me misjudged me and made some pretty damned stupid mistakes which cost me dearly. These are people who are supposed to be responsible, who are supposed to be careful, and who are supposed to know what they're doing. Instead, guesswork and inaccurate gut feeling, and gossip and slander and rumor, and jumping to conclusions, and taking serious action without the slightest proof of guilt or crime committed, or even any opportunity to give the accused chance to speak or to defend himself became the preferential modus operandi. They won't come forward and admit what they did, or apologize for what they did. The cowards ended up hiding, instead. In the end, I and an honorable organization ended up being taken down by something which very much reminds me of a bunch of vicious little girls in high school who were jealous over some guy or some thing that another girl had, and who spread malicious lies and rumors and used torture to destroy her and get her out of the way. It's like some sick mirror of Mean Girls...only between guys. (Mostly.) But I'm not going to let their stupidity slow me down. As my friend Alisa can attest, I indeed wanted to jump ship many times; but in the end I kept my faith in myself, and my reason, and character and honor prevailed.
Steve Jobs once said, "Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become."
I have no idea what tomorrow will bring, or what lies in front of me. I don't care. It's the point. I've decided to move forward; to keep going. I've always wanted to do good things...FOR people, and I'm not going to allow anyone to prevent me from doing that. It's for the honor that I do what I do. Sick people attacked me and destroyed my name for no good reason, made me sacrifice for some brand new idea they had for a whole new "race" of SKYWARN people, and it failed. And when they realized what they'd done to me, they never apologized, never owned up, never tried to make it better. This is depressing, and disheartening...but still I move onwards...for the honor. And don't speak to me about courage. Don't even do it! I had more. I always had more. Those people who went out of their way to destroy my name, and to try to take Alachua County SKYWARN's, and who tried to take equipment that didn't belong to them, and who convinced whole police agencies that I was the problem...those people...had no courage, nor honor.
Todd L. Sherman / KB4MHH
Co-founder, Alachua County Amateur Radio Emergency Service
Founder/Coordinator, Alachua County SKYWARN
Founder/Project Mgr., Alachua County EMWIN Project