11.29.2006

A Warning For the Ladies

I was reading the local section of yesterday's Naples Daily News in the break room this morning, and found this story: Man arrested at Beall's outlet store in women's dressing room

When 48-year-old Christopher Reed Oslin walked into the Beall's Outlet Store in East Naples on Sunday, authorities say he had more than Christmas shopping in mind.

At about 2:40 p.m. a Collier County sheriff's deputy received a telephone call from his wife who was shopping at Beall's at 2710 U.S. 41 E. and reported seeing a man acting strangely in the women's dressing room. When the deputy arrived he saw a person with "manly looking hairy ankles" standing in one of the stalls, an arrest report stated.

When a woman entered the next stall, the man with the hairy ankles placed what appeared to be a bundle of clothes on the ground. He then reached down to turn and angle the clothing, authorities reported.

The deputy called for backup, talked to a store manager and then knocked on the stall door and asked to speak to the man. Authorities said the man, identified as Oslin, of 265 Georgetown Blvd., opened the stall door dressed only in socks, white underwear and a T-shirt.

Oslin appeared to be sexually aroused, an arrest report stated.

After Oslin put on his pants and exited the stall, the deputy found a pair of blue work shorts on the ground with a Sony camcorder hidden inside them.

Authorities said Oslin was inside the dressing room for more than an hour. Investigators reviewed the video from the camcorder and observed several people changing clothes, including several scenes of people in the nude, an arrest report indicates.
Amazingly, he was only charged with "loitering and prowling," because for him to be charged with "voyeurism," the cops would have had to know who the victims were.

This is the second recent case of a peeping Tom in a department store dressing room. The other guy had drilled peepholes to look into the next dressing stall. The store security people had found the holes and filled them up, but he came back and re-drilled them! Amazing chutzpah.

So ladies, the next time you go to a department store and are going to try on some clothes, check the walls for peepholes and the floor, etc., for pervs with cameras, before you disrobe. In this day and age of miniaturized electronics, you can't be too careful. If the voyeurs down here in Florida are doing it, the odds are that your local ones are thinking of ways to do the same sort of thing.