Topic Library — Stalking (Year 1 Foundations)

School: Minister Destiny Testimony Schools Track: Law Enforcement Class: Topic Library — Year 1 (Foundations) Founded and presented by: Muslim Ordained Minister Destiny Marie Morgan

A note on what this school is: this is community-designed training, built from lived experience in the neighborhoods being policed. It is not agency policy and does not replace your department's training, general orders, or the law. Where this program proposes new approaches, they are taught and labeled as proposals. Nothing here is legal advice.

Before you start

• This school never collects your name. Progress and quiz answers stay on your device; pass the unit quiz (80% or higher, retakes allowed) and your certificate downloads with a blank name line to fill in after saving. Answers are not shown.
• Stalking victims usually call many times before anyone is charged, and many arrive apologizing for "bothering" you with messages and flowers. This unit teaches the response this community is asking for: read the pattern, not the single incident in front of you; treat documentation as the backbone of the case; use protection orders as working tools; and remember that stalking linked to a former partner is a recognized warning sign for serious violence, including homicide.

The lesson

Part 1. What stalking is — a pattern, not a single act

In general terms, stalking is a course of conduct, two or more acts aimed at a specific person, that would cause a reasonable person to fear for their safety or suffer substantial emotional distress, done knowingly or in circumstances where the person should have known the effect. Exact elements, grading, and penalties are set by your state's law. The investigative consequence of that definition is the heart of this unit: you are not investigating an incident; you are investigating a pattern. A call that looks small, a text, a drive-by, a gift left at a door, is frequently one square of a quilt the victim has been living under for months.

Stalkers are most often former intimate partners, followed by acquaintances, coworkers, and family members; stranger stalking is the minority. Victims are stalked by people who know their routines, their children's schools, their fears. Many victims minimize ("he hasn't touched me"), delay reporting out of shame or fear of not being believed, and present with exhaustion rather than a tidy chronology. None of that is evidence the stalking is not happening. It is the common presentation of this crime, and your interview should be built for it.

Part 2. How stalking works — following, contact, monitoring, and showing up

Take reports with the four families of behavior in mind, and ask about each one specifically; victims rarely volunteer the category they think "doesn't count."

• Following and watching: drive-bys of home and work, waiting in lots, appearing at the gym, store, or place of worship with claimed coincidences.
• Unwanted contact: repeated calls, texts, and messages, including through new accounts after blocks; letters, gifts, flowers, and deliveries after a clear instruction to stop.
• Monitoring: phone or vehicle tracking, demands for location sharing, reading messages, misuse of shared accounts, smart-home devices, cameras, and using children, relatives, or coworkers as information sources.
• Showing up and interfering: appearing at events, contacting the victim's employer or family, property damage, items left to prove access, and threats against the victim, children, pets, or the stalker's own life.

Risk factors that raise urgency in any stalking case: a former intimate relationship; threats of violence or suicide tied to the victim; escalation in frequency or boldness; in-person appearances after digital-only contact; attempts to isolate the victim; substance use with fixation; and access to firearms combined with threats or obsession. Where your department uses a lethality or risk-assessment tool, use it; where it does not, document these factors in the report so prosecutors and the next officer see them. Separation is a period of elevated risk: a victim who has just left, filed, or served papers deserves a response planned around that fact.

Part 3. The law in general — stalking, harassment, and protection orders

Your charging landscape, in general terms: stalking charges under state law, with federal law reaching some interstate conduct and interstate communications; criminal harassment charges, which in Massachusetts in general cover a pattern of conduct intended to seriously alarm and cause substantial emotional distress; related charges the facts may support, such as threats, witness intimidation, trespass, property damage, and violations of court orders; and the underlying offenses when stalking escalates into assault or worse.

Protection orders are the working tool victims use between incidents. In Massachusetts in general, abuse-prevention orders cover family and household members and dating partners, and civil harassment-prevention orders cover people outside those relationships, including many stalking victims. Your roles are practical: explain the order process and the courthouse plainly; help the victim understand that an order can be sought without a criminal charge; take violations seriously and arrest where the law and facts provide, because a violation is itself a crime and one of the clearest escalation markers you will ever be handed; and document service, terms, and the respondent's stated reaction where you observe it.

Coordinate early with prosecutors on pattern cases. Stalking prosecutions are built from accumulated documentation across reports, calls, and agencies. A case file that reads as twelve disconnected "unfounded" or "civil" incidents is usually a filing failure, not a facts failure. Cross-reference prior calls by name, address, and phone number through your systems, and say the word "stalking" in reports where the pattern supports it, so the next reader sees the case you saw.

Part 4. Documenting and keeping evidence safely

Teach victims the stalking log this school's Adult unit teaches, and treat it as evidence from the first day: dated, same-day, factual entries covering each incident, witnesses, and the effect on the victim's safety. Ask for it, copy it, and add your own reports to the same chronology.

Evidence practices for the pattern case:

1. Preserve communications in original form. Screenshots with visible account names and dates help, but originals on the device matter more. Follow your department's process for consent, downloads, and preservation requests to platforms where applicable, and instruct the victim not to delete anything, including after arrests.
2. Capture monitoring evidence. Ask directly about trackers, shared accounts, and smart devices. Victims often discover location sharing only when the stalker quotes it. Document suspected tracking factually and follow your process for locating and handling devices; advise the victim before removing anything that sudden changes can alert the stalker and raise risk, so changes belong inside a safety plan.
3. Collect third-party accounts. Coworkers who saw the car, neighbors with doorbell footage, family members who received messages. Interview them and record names while the incidents are fresh; patterns are corroborated by other people's ordinary memories.
4. Write pattern reports. Each report should summarize the course of conduct to date, reference prior report numbers, and state risk factors from Part 2. Avoid closing language that contradicts the file ("verbal only," "no crime") when the documented pattern says otherwise; if elements are not yet met, write what is missing and what would meet them, so the victim knows what to preserve.
5. Protect the victim's information. Follow rules and policy on victim addresses and contact information in reports and releases. A stalker who reads a report should learn nothing about where the victim now lives, works, or shelters.

Part 5. Safety planning and reporting, step by step

Your response sequence on a stalking report:

1. Believe first, and say the pattern back. "What you are describing is a pattern, and we are going to document all of it." Then interview for the whole course of conduct, using Part 2's four families as your prompts, back to its first incident.
2. Assess immediate safety. Where is the stalker now? Any threats today? Weapons access? Children and their schools involved? Arrange escorts, extra patrols, or a safe place for the night through your resources where risk warrants.
3. Build the file in the first visit. Report with full chronology, evidence copies or a dated plan to obtain them, risk factors, prior-call cross-references, and a copy for the victim with the report number.
4. Connect the legal tools. Explain protection orders and the courthouse process, offer the victim advocate, and where elements support it, consult prosecutors about charges for the pattern, not only the latest act.
5. Make a follow-up plan the victim can repeat back: what to save, what to do at the next incident (call 911 while it happens where safe, then the log), who their contact is, and when you will check in. Hand over hotline information: the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) supports stalking victims, including those stalked by non-partners, and 988 supports victims in crisis.
6. Treat every later call as part of the same case. New incidents get added to the chronology, violations of orders get enforced, and changes in risk get reassessed. The stalker learns the pattern has an audience that does not get bored. That is deterrence the victim can feel.

Part 6. Support, roles, and rights — for the person targeted and people around them

Roles. Patrol builds the chronology and enforces orders; detectives carry long pattern cases and platform and device evidence; prosecutors decide pattern charges and argue risk at hearings; advocates hold the victim's safety plan together across all of it; courts issue and extend orders. The victim's role is only to report and preserve. If your process makes victims carry messages between agencies, the process is broken; warm handoffs are the officer's job.

The victim's position. Victims may report without having been physically attacked, may seek an order without a charge, and may be told what stage a case is in, in general terms. They may also be frightened of the system itself, particularly where the stalker has threatened that police will not believe "someone like them." Your steadiness is the counter-argument: same seriousness at call twelve as at call one.

Community members will sometimes report a neighbor's stalking before the victim does. Take those reports, protect the reporter's information under your rules, and approach the victim with an offer, not an ambush: information, an advocate's number, and an open door. Officer safety and bias notes: stalkers may present calmly and cast themselves as the wronged party, may file counter-reports, and may attempt to use your visit to learn the victim's reactions or location. Verify through records, keep victim information protected, and remember that the composed person at the door is not automatically the truthful one. Finally, attend to accumulation in yourself: pattern cases are marathons of someone else's fear. Use debriefs and peer support, and hand off a case you can no longer see clearly. The file deserves fresh eyes more than it needs your pride.

Words to know — Stalking

• Stalking — a pattern of conduct aimed at a specific person that causes fear for safety or serious distress.
• Course of conduct — two or more acts that together show a continuing purpose; the pattern element of stalking.
• Monitoring — watching or tracking a person's movements, messages, accounts, or location without consent.
• Cyberstalking — stalking carried out through electronic communications and online accounts.
• Credible threat — a statement or act that a reasonable person would take as a serious expression of intent to harm.
• Stalking log — a dated, factual record of each incident, used to document the pattern.
• Pattern evidence — the accumulated reports, messages, recordings, and witness accounts that together prove a course of conduct.
• Protection order — a court order prohibiting contact and requiring a person to stay away; violating it is a crime.
• No-contact order — a court order forbidding any contact, direct or through others, with a named person.
• Victim advocate — a trained support person who helps a victim understand options, court processes, and safety planning.
• Risk assessment — a structured review of factors, such as threats, escalation, and weapons access, that indicate danger of serious harm.

Myths vs facts — Stalking

• Myth: If there has been no physical attack, there is no crime to report. Fact: Stalking is the pattern itself. Threats, monitoring, and showing up are the conduct the law covers, before any attack.
• Myth: Friendly messages and gifts cannot be part of a stalking case. Fact: Unwanted contact after a clear stop is part of the course of conduct whatever its tone.
• Myth: Each call should be judged on its own facts alone. Fact: The case is the accumulation. Reports should cross-reference the pattern, prior calls, and prior report numbers.
• Myth: A victim who answered some messages undermined the case. Fact: Victims respond for many reasons, including fear. The pattern, the clear stop, and the continuation are the focus.
• Myth: Protection orders only matter if the victim calls during a violation. Fact: Orders structure the whole response: service, terms, enforcement, and a record prosecutors and judges can act on.

Think it through — Stalking

A woman flags you down outside a grocery store. Her ex-boyfriend, she says, "hasn't done anything, really," but she has a folder: printed screenshots of roughly three hundred messages over two months, three new accounts after blocks, notes she wrote after finding flowers on her car twice, and a photo of his truck across from her workplace yesterday. She apologizes twice for wasting your time. Her last message to him, a month ago, said "Stop contacting me." Since then the messages turned angry. Walk your response.

Walk it through: (1) Name it correctly (Part 1): a course of conduct aimed at a specific person, continuing after an unambiguous stop, escalating in tone, with in-person appearances. This is a stalking report, and the folder is the beginning of pattern evidence (Part 4). (2) Interview for the whole pattern using the four families (Part 2): following and showing up (car, flowers, truck at work), contact (messages and new accounts), monitoring (ask directly: does he know things he could only know by watching or tracking? check location sharing and shared accounts together), interference (has he contacted her employer or family?). (3) Assess risk on the known factors: former partner, post-separation escalation, anger turn, in-person appearances, and ask about threats and firearms access directly. (4) Build and connect (Part 5): full chronology report cross-referencing any prior calls, copies of the folder with a plan for originals, protection-order information, victim advocate, prosecutor consultation on pattern charges, and a follow-up plan she can repeat back. (5) Close the apology loop: "You are not wasting my time. This folder is exactly what we ask victims to keep, and you brought it before anyone was hurt. That is how this is supposed to work."

Try this — Stalking

Drill the pattern response:

• ☐ I interview for the whole course of conduct, prompting with all four families: following, contact, monitoring, showing up
• ☐ I ask directly about tracking, location sharing, shared accounts, and smart devices on every stalking report
• ☐ I cross-reference prior calls by name, address, and number, and cite prior report numbers in each new report
• ☐ I document Part 2 risk factors (former partner, threats, escalation, weapons access) in every stalking report
• ☐ I can explain protection orders and the courthouse process in plain words, and I offer the victim advocate
• ☐ I never close a stalking report with language that contradicts the documented pattern in the file

Resources to keep — Stalking

• 911 — for a victim in immediate danger, or a stalker present now.
• National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 (thehotline.org) — safety planning and stalking support for victims.
• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988 — crisis support for victims, and for people worried about them.
• RAINN: 1-800-656-4673 — support when stalking is connected to sexual violence.
• Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741741 — silent support a victim can use when speaking aloud is unsafe.
• mass.gov — Massachusetts information on protection orders and harassment prevention orders.
• On scene: Your department's victim advocates, detectives, and prosecutors for pattern charges.

What you earned / what's next — Stalking

✅ Stalking complete (quiz score 80% or higher): You can define stalking as a course of conduct, interview across its four families of behavior, spot the risk factors that raise urgency, build pattern evidence and chronology reports, and connect victims to orders, advocates, and a follow-up plan.

Your certificate

Minister Destiny Testimony Schools Certificate of Completion — Topic Library: Stalking

This certificate is presented by Muslim Ordained Minister Destiny Marie Morgan

Awarded to: ______________________________ (write your name here after you download — your name is never collected or stored by this school)

Date completed: ______________

Congratulations. You learned to see the whole pattern instead of the smallest incident, and to build the record that protects a person before the worst call comes. — Minister Destiny Marie Morgan

This is a certificate of educational completion from Minister Destiny Testimony Schools. It is not a state license, a government certification, or legal training for representing anyone. School rank and completion are school achievements only — not a law-enforcement rank, title, or credential.

What's next: The Gang Stalking unit, in this Topic Library.

Sources

• Stalking Prevention, Awareness, & Resource Center (SPARC) — stalkingawareness.org — stalking fact sheets and victim documentation guidance.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — cdc.gov — preventing stalking, public guidance.
• Massachusetts government — mass.gov — protection orders and harassment prevention information.

Minister Destiny Testimony Schools — Law Enforcement. Educational information only, not legal advice. Help lines: 911 · 988 (call or text) · National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-7233 · RAINN 1-800-656-4673.