I’m A Teacher and I’m Being Threatened and Harassed Because Of It, And Nobody Cares
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Update Number One:
The local police department contacted me via email, and written in the subject heading is this:
Disregard previous email regarding your report not in our jurisdiction as that was sent in error to you.
That’s it.
No additional contact. No investigation.
The public safety department at my school also contacted me, requesting the email sent by the telephone system with the menacing voicemail attached, suggesting there may be some information that might be gleaned from the message.
I forwarded the message and received the following in return:
I will be out of the office thru . . . (next 10 days). I will have limited access to email during that time.
It MAY BE that Craiglist has blocked any posting listing my name, address, or personal details because I have not had any unexpected visitors at my door the past four days, as far as I know.
I was camping for the weekend, to get away from this nonsense.
I submitted a report to the FBI’s internet crime division, and I have heard nothing from them.
I understand: there are serious crimes out there — murder and kidnapping and assault and rape — and with the limited resources afforded to law enforcement, they have to triage their efforts towards more serious crime.
I guess we are all okay with that.
That is, until it happens to you.
Because realize, when it happens to you:
You are on your own.
Maybe you are familiar with Thomas Hobbes and John Locke’s classic argument about the state of nature, or how humans would behave and relate in a state of nature absent the controls of civilized society.
According to Locke, humans in a state of nature would be harmonious, cooperative, charitable and kind with one another, servicing the better angels of our nature, but according to Hobbes, the state of nature is nasty, brutish, and short, a dog-eat-dog world where might-makes-right, and all these high-minded virtues and ideals that Locke describes dead-on-arrival.
If it’s not obvious to you, if it has not yet happened or occurred to you, let me assure you, when the rubber hits the road, when the heel hits the ground, when push comes to shove:
You are on your own.
