Dozens of women in Calgary have been violated by a voyeur with a twisted Twitter account.
“Canada creep” was based in Calgary and is filled with images of unsuspecting women and the self-proclaimed creep even filmed up some women’s skirts.
@canadacreep had nearly 17,000 followers signed up to see these secretly filmed women.
CTV Calgary showed the videos to several women working downtown and they all had the same comments.
“It’s creepy. It’s really inappropriate. It’s scary!"
Every tweet has an offensive or lewd title about their body parts and many of them were taken in downtown Calgary, many on Stephen Avenue, some at nearby malls, a plus 15 and in parks around Calgary.
Women who work in the area are stunned.
“How do you stop this thought. When you see someone taking a picture in this situation it's kind of hard,” says Melissa Souto who works on Stephen Avenue.
One criminologist says there is a grey area with these types of accounts.
“It can be argued that because it is a public space there is no notion of privacy so limited in terms of that recourse in the legal system,” says Dr. D. Scharie Tavcer a criminologist at Mount Royal University.
However, it became criminal when whomever is behind this controversial account starts filming up women’s skirts.
“We have started an active investigation we are looking at all the reports coming in as well as proactively looking for the people that are victims of the crimes we are seeing online,” says S/Sgt. Cory Dayley of the Calgary Police Service Cyber/Forensics Unit.
Police are looking into charges of voyeurism.
“Anything that is underneath a layer of clothes there is an expectation of privacy in our mind and under the code,” says Dayley.
People behind another popular twitter account, @Crackmacs, urged their followers to report the account to twitter and by Tuesday morning the account was suspended.
@canadacreep had been up and running for a year and police were alarmed they hadn’t received any complaints until this week.
The police investigation is underway and they encourage any victims to contact them.
It could be a month before they gather the images from twitter and find the person behind the account.
Investigators say charges in this case could evolve.
(With files from Brad MacLeod)
