Devices spy on unsuspecting women

Date: 28/03/2005
Source: Oakland Tribune
Author: Angela Hill

RICHMOND — No one would notice, and that's the problem. A woman changing clothes in a department-store dressing room might not think much of a man's nondescript athletic shoe poking ever so slightly underneath the stall curtain.

She might write it off merely as the sign of a patient man waiting for his wife in the hallway, or perhaps a dressed-down store employee.

She certainly wouldn't detect the tiny hole in the instep of the shoe — smaller than a cigarette burn, and even less obvious.

And that's what these men are counting on, video voyeurs who hide tiny cameras in their shoes with wires running up their pant legs to video recorders in teir backpacks or fanny packs, secretly filming up women's skirts in changing rooms, grocery store lines or coffee shops.

Richmond police say they nabbed one such voyeur earlier this month when they arrested 63-year-old Robert A. Knop of Berkeley at the Richmond Costco. Investigators say two sharp-eyed teenage twin girls spotted the man lurking near their mother, and figured out what was going on.

"But that's rare," said Richmond police Sgt. Mark Gagen. "It's tough to catch these guys. It's so subtle. And every day the technology gets smaller and easier to hide — it's come a long way from guys putting mirrors on the toes of their shoes.

"So we want to raise women's awareness as to what to look out for," Gagen said. "Voyeurism is a sexually deviant behavior, and can lead to more aggressive acts once the suspect has reached a threshold for it. So we want people to be alert to these things."

Indeed, the device police found in Knop's dark gray athletic shoe was larger and of an older style than cameras available today, Gagen said, holding up the black 1-inch-wide box with a small lens on top, wired into the shoe. He then compared it to the still tinier video cameras found on the latest cell phones.

"With something that small, who would ever know?" he asked. "We recovered at least 50 two-hour tapes in this guy's car, some that were marked things like 'Long Beach: 2001.' He's been collecting these tapes over a significant period of time.

"With all these tapes, there are literally thousands of women involved — shown in dressing rooms, in grocery store lines," Gagen said. "In some cases, the camera has even been taken out of the shoe and put in bathroom stalls in coffee shops and restaurants. You'll see women on the tapes scowling down at the camera, like they're wondering what it is. But then they just ignore it and go on changing clothes or whatever."

Not only is it tough to catch such voyeurs, it's also tough to stop them from doing it again because the crime only counts as a misdemeanor, resulting in minimal fines and brief, if any, jail time.

"It falls under the 'disorderly conduct' section of the California penal code," said Contra Costa County Deputy District Attorney Dara Cashman, who will be reviewing the Knop case early this week to determine appropriate charges to file.

"Probably because of advances in technology, the section was recently expanded," she said. "It specifically says if someone 'uses a concealed camcorder ... or photographic camera of any type' to secretly film under or through someone's clothing. And it was expanded to include tanning booths and other places of a reasonable expectation of privacy.

"If the suspect has a prior offense of the same nature, the sentence can be increased," Cashman said. "But they just can't seem to make it a felony, no matter how creepy it is."

It was just a few years ago that prosecutors didn't know what to do with such a crime at all. In 1996, Oakland police arrested a man at a downtown athletic club for videotaping naked men in the locker rooms. They ended up charging him only with eavesdropping and recording confidential conversations because no other charge quite fit the circumstances.

The case did not involve juveniles or lewd acts, nor had the man tried to sell the video, prosecutors said at the time. In addition, it was not considered a "peeping tom" case, because the man was not looking through a door or window.

The penal code has since come to recognize the use of concealed recording devices. And now camera cell phones are off limits at most health clubs and locker rooms.

But actual arrests for video voyeurism are few and far between. In 2003, a 55-year-old Redwood City man was cited with a misdemeanor for using a concealed camera on his shoe to film under women's skirts at a car show. Also in 2003, Berkeley police warned the public about a man in his early 20s videotaping and sometimes even taking flash photographs up women's skirts in local stores. The man was never caught.

Investigators said Knop, currently out on $50,000 bail, is a construction equipment operator and salesman who has a wife and family. "Most voyeurs keep this well hidden, and their family doesn't even have any idea," Gagen said.

Knop has a prior conviction for a similar case in Carlsbad in 1999, Gagen said. Police say it's not clear if he was planning to post these images on the Internet, or merely view them for personal use.

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