7 months ago
WASHINGTON, DC (WUSA) -- The local stalking law under which Councilman Marian Barry was arrested last weekend is a 1993 attempt to prevent the kind of physical stalking that defined the crime before heavy internet use took the crime into cyberspace as well. Now, lawmakers are attempting to change that law in an attempt to make it effective in a 21st century world.
"Folks who are interested in stalking somebody else, they can find various ways of doing it, and the law that was written by the council maybe 15-years-ago had not thought of all the ways that a person could be stalked," said DC Councilman Phil Mendelson.
"Everybody knows that if I were to follow you in a way that intimidated and harassed you that that would be stalking, but another way that I could stalk you would be to use the internet and, let's say use your web address or email address and put up a dummy posting that tells everybody to contact you in some way that is really very annoying. And it's because I'm trying to get back at you for something, and that would be included among the amendments," Mendelson told 9NEWS NOW.
"DC and many jurisdictions around the country enacted their original stalking laws in the early to mid-90s and much of what we have learned about stalking has evolved in that time and our laws do need to catch up, so many jurisdictions around the country are in need of revised stalking laws," said Michelle Garcia of the Stalking Resource Center.
"One of the things we see lacking in many laws is the inclusion of technology, that many forms of technology that we see stalkers using like global positioning systems or audio and video recording devices or spyware didn't exist when these laws were enacted and weren't popularly available to most people, so we need to have laws that recognize the reality that many, if not most, stalkers are using these forms of technology," Garcia said.
DC council members are expected to vote on the revisions next week, with the possibility that the new statute could be on the books by the end of the month.
