January marks National Stalking Awareness Month; Corner Brook RNC Sgt Shawna Park joins BayFM's The Plain Truth

    Friday, 19 January 2024 12:00

    By Tonya Organ

    Park says police follow the Criminal Code of Canada and the term “stalking” is not part of it but criminal harassment is.

    January marks National Stalking Awareness Month. It is an annual call to action to recognize and respond to this prevalent, traumatic and dangerous crime. According to the Stalking Prevention Awareness and Resource Center (SPARC), stalking is trivialized, minimized and often goes unrecognized. On BayFM’s The Plain Truth this week, host Paula Sheppard says stalking can also be viewed as criminal harassment. Her guest on the show this week was RNC Sargent Shawna Park, who says police follow the Criminal Code of Canada and the term “stalking” is not part of it but criminal harassment is. Park says criminal harassment is common but is not always reported to police because people don’t understand the full scope of what it really is. He says to lay a charge of criminal harassment there only needs to be one behavior or instance that is threatening and unwanted. She says this can also include electronic harassment and she’s seen one case that involved 1500 unwanted text messages in one day.

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