NOTE: David Lawson's excellent book, Terrorist Stalking in America is poorly named, (should be "Organized Stalking in America") and Lawson's references should be to "organized stalking" rather than "cause stalking" for purposes of helping the unaware to understand the nature of this crime.

In this spiel I have altered the language of David Lawson so as to best educate the site visitor and leave the correct impression as with them. My alterations use the accepted editorial [square bracket] notation in this document. Lawson's original wording is in some cases awkward, so I have changed, within the square brackets, the wording to make reading it flow more smoothly.

Organized stalking is stalking by multiple members of the community, often over a hundred, in rotation, so that no one perpetrator commits a major offence, and motivated by vicious lies told about the target. Organized stalking is sometimes accompanied by use of electronic anti-personnel weapons, some of which have been available and not secret for some years. The electronic weapons will not be covered in this presentation.

Here in the early 21st century, perhaps one person in a thousand has become a target of organized stalking.

"Organized stalking", according to one investigator, got it's start with the Ku Klux Klan. While the original Klan members knew they were breaking the law, those who have been targets of organized stalking for some years see fellow citizens harassing them who display obvious enthusiasm, reflecting feelings that they are entirely justified in committing these crimes. It is as if the stalkers don't see what they are doing as a crime.

Targets have come to find out, over time, that these harassment groups have been told vicious lies about them. The harassers are told we have a criminal past, are prostitutes, drug users, drug dealers, and the all-time favourite, that targets are child sex abusers.

Some of the harassers are motivated by religion, believing they are "doing the Lord's work" by harassing targets to force them to "atone" for their supposed "sins."

Targets are often asked, "Why would anyone want to harass you? You're just a nobody." The answer is, once the target's community has been repeatedly told, and supplied with bogus "evidence", that the target is a child sex abuser, the target is NO LONGER just a nobody. Targets become high profile criminals!

The harassment techniques are carefully scripted, and are chosen from only those things which do happen to everyone, "life's normal breaks."

Things like having a car block you in and the driver nowhere to be found, having a neighbour start up a leaf blower just as you are trying to nap in your back yard, or having a huge number of people pile into a store just as you arrive, in a hurry, and line up ahead of you. Those are at the lighter end of the organized stalking attack spectrum.

The organized stalkers take advantage of the fact that people who know the target can never grasp what life is like when "normal breaks" start to happen several times a DAY, ... EVERY day, of the life of the target. Human beings reject claims of "normal breaks" happening several times a day, presumably because it has never happend to them.

More than that, people around the organized stalking target simply can't believe that anyone would harass a target, often for years, and often for life, where the target isn't a "special person". "Special person" meaning, a known criminal, a member of government intelligence, someone with connections to organized crime, or someone who is famous. The average citizen just doesn't accept that an ordinary person can become the target of around the clock crime and harassment for no visible reason.

But lack of understanding as to why organized stalking happens does not mean it's not happening. In 2001, organized stalking researcher David Lawson, private investigator, wrote a book titled "Terrorist Stalking in America" to describe his experiences as he researched the highly networked stalking groups in the United States and Canada. Lawson's book appears to be the first book which exposes these brutal crimes.

The book "Terrorist Stalking in America" places the blame for organized stalking on what the author calls "extremist groups". In Lawson's more recent updated book, titled "Cause Stalking", he declares that "foreign terrorists" and "anti-government groups" are the culprits.

But targets on the receiving end of organized stalking see self- righteous people with a "citizen watch" mindset harassing them. Targets feel that Lawson's first-person OBSERVATIONS are excellent, but they question his CONCLUSIONS. Organized stalking is now a huge enterprise, and it is possible David Lawson did in fact encounter foreign terrorists and anti-government groups, but targets involved in networking haven't.

Author David Lawson interviewed perpetrators, targetted people, and the police. Here is what the author heard from the police he interviewed:

Quote: "I also spoke with police officers from across the country. They confirmed the existence of stalking groups across the country. In general, they said that '[organized] stalking' is primarily a civil problem where the plaintiff has to prove financial loss. They also said that there are free speech and grass roots issues involved." End quote.

Targets question criminal harassment as being a civil problem. SINGLE stalking cases are taken seriously by the justice system. What in fact happens is that the police refuse to enforce stalking and harassment laws if a target complains of more than one harasser. The police will not even file the complaints of organized stalking with an official file number. This keeps organized stalking out of crime statistics, making it impossible for targets to gain traction in their efforts to expose and stop these crimes.

David Lawson continues:

Quote: "In fact, the police themselves are [sometimes] targets of these [stalking groups.] In small towns, the number of members in [stalking groups] can easily exceed the number of police officers. In general, the police will NOT talk [publicly] about [stalking groups]. One officer did say there is a "storm brewing" as [stalking groups] become larger and more numerous."

Author Lawson explains here how he got involved and began to interact with the organized stalking members:

Quote: "One day, several years ago, I was sitting in my house, and checking out the activity on my scanner. I heard a woman say that she was following a certain vehicle. She gave the location, the make and model of the car and the license plate number. A few days later, I heard the same woman on the same frequency say that she needed a bit of help at a certain location and a few days after that I again heard her broadcasting the position and details about another vehicle she was following. I listened to other people talking on that frequency and they didn't give any indication that they were with any government agency but they were talking about ARRESTING PEOPLE."

Here, David Lawson is explaining how he got involved with researching these stalking groups:

Quote: "People in the group would discuss where they would go for supper, after their [harassment] shift was over, so I [the author] went too. I listened to a group of people openly discussing various activities as if they were the police."

He monitored organized stalking group communications, attended their meetings, and even rode with them as they performed their surveillance and harassment assignments.

The author defines the basic reason for being for these stalking groups as "cause" stalking. "Cause" stalking means the group is assembled, under a leader with a "shadowy past", for some specific "cause." But what actually happens is that the "cause" is essentially for recruiting purposes. Lawson states:

Quote: "Cause stalking has been used by extremist groups since the early 1990s. The basic system is alleged to have been developed by the Ku Klux Klan and refined through years of use."

Quote: "[Stalking] group members are taught that THE TARGET IS THE REASON FOR THEIR PROBLEMS."

More details about the typical organized stalking recruit:

Quote: "Recruits [can be] blue collar workers who are at the bottom end of the job scale. They [can be] janitors in apartments, hotels, etc., who have KEYS to get in any locked doors. They [can be] security guards, who can let fellow members into places where they would not normally be allowed to go. They [can be] city workers, who can, in [some] cities, follow a target around all day in their vehicles..."

"The [stalking group members can be] taxi drivers, who are always on the road. They [can also be] cable, telephone and electric company employees who can interfere with a target's service and spend time on patrol with the [stalking group], while they are on the job."

Those are the author's words from the book "Terrorist Stalking in America." Here are a few quotes from the organized stalkers themselves:

Quote: "We are like the police except we are ABOVE the police."

Quote: "We are a citizen's group that helps the police. We are trying to alert people in the area about [the target] before he gets to do what he did in the last place he lived." End quote.

Targets assert that while there are a few ex-convicts among their number, the overwhelming majority have no criminal record. Lawson continues, quoting the harassers he interviewed:

"Who are we? We drive the ambulances that take you to the emergency room. When your house is burning, we put out the fire. We are security guards. We protect you at night. You only have electricity, phone and cable service because of us. We are janitors. We have the keys. We fix your cars. YOU DON'T WANT TO MESS WITH US."

The author concludes, as explained at a number of places in the books, that the "cause" the typical stalking group is "working toward" is mainly an EXCUSE to get the groups together. The main motivation of members who stay with these stalking groups is the sense of power and belonging the group members derive.

Having a "cause" enhances the group's feelings of power and righteousness, but stalking group members, according to the author, are most concerned with how their fellow organized stalkers feel about their "work" and accept them.

These stalking groups come into being and are run by leaders. Here is what the the book "Terrorist Stalking in America" says about them:

Quote: "Most of these leaders have backgrounds which are not known to their supporters. They are from 'somewhere else' and there isn't much information available about them from independent sources. This provides a basis for the 'larger than life' stature they assume in these groups.

Quote: "[Stalking groups] are well financed. They can afford to rent property wherever the target lives.

Here is what the author learned about the source of financing for some of the stalking groups:

Quote: "The operations of many [stalking groups] are actually financed by CORPORATIONS which use them to stalk their "enemies" or "potential enemies." The [stalking groups can be] used as the private armies of those corporations. Some countries kill dissidents and in others they are jailed. In the United States, someone who is threatening to corporations or industries, like a whistleblower or activist, is likely to become the target of a [stalking group]."