The Last time I tailed someone

There is nothing scarier than being followed. There is also nothing more frightening to know you are being tailed by someone and not know the reasons why they are following you instead of somebody else. Either way whether you are being followed in your car or walking on the sidewalk the fact that someone else is watching your every move is both suspicious and concerning.

Why would anyone follow me you ask? The reality is that many people get followed or tailed by someone else. We immediately think of spies but that’s not very realistic as it is more likely you would be followed by a cop or another type of investigator before spies. That doesn’t leave too many other people except private detectives, angry exes or family of exes.

Of course we have the road rage guy (or woman) who follows you home to demonstrate their displeasure with your driving skills and are so angry they want to give you a piece of mind or worse, shoot you for your inconsiderate attitude even if they are the ones who did the wrong thing. It is important not to underestimate this option as there have been many violent cases shown that road rage is on the rise. 

However, if you are being followed by a professional, you will likely not know it until it is too late. The skill of following someone takes years to perfect and even then you can make a mistake or two to get caught or detected. This happened to me when I was asked to tail someone who I knew very well and without revealing his relationship with me, let us just say he was family. I knew where he worked, ate, played and with whom he hanged out with. 

Unfortunately sometimes there comes a time you are asked by family to do things you don’t agree with or basically have a problem with. Tailing this guy was a big problem for me because we were family but the peer pressure asserted by family made it impossible to pass. I had to do it just to get them off my back. 

Knowing the schedule well, I parted at a time that gave me the opportunity to set up my observation points and make sure I was in a position to be mobile once he left his work. Armed with a good camera I had a telescopic lens that could capture anything within 100 yards or so clearly and a pair of binoculars just in case I needed to see better. Actually this is all the equipment I needed except the car. I had to have a dependable car that would blend in with the traffic and not stand out. 

This I did not have at the time and I had to use my orange four wheel drive Jeep to follow him. This meant I had to stay back further and be more conspicuous with my presence as well as not losing him when he left work. 

I had and advantage of knowing my surroundings and streets and side streets. This guy I followed was observed for four days without him knowing it and I could almost predict where he turned and where he stopped as well as with who he was in the car with at what time and where. I wrote it all down in case he denied it but make no mistake, I had no fun doing this for family. 

I wrote down where he went for breakfast when he got off work at 5 a.m. from the building. I knew and photographed who joined him for breakfast and where they went from there. I photographed him with her at two different locations. 

The first in the parking lot after he dropped her off from breakfast and the other was at her house when he went inside for breakfast. It was a nasty situation and I didn’t feel good about this at all. It was dirty pool and I was a big part of it. 

They never suspected it or looked over their shoulders. They had no idea they were being watched and photographed as I took my time gathering the evidence the family wanted. I dropped back and stayed back or in some cases, I got to a vantage point before them and waited for them to show up. It was that predictable after watching them for a few days. 

There was no guilt. There was no suspicion and there was no reason why anyone would have followed them except that he was doing something with someone he worked with and had a relationship with that was not only immoral but a violation of trust between my family and him. He lied constantly about his whereabouts and always had an excuse for coming home late. He didn’t know I captured it all on film and he couldn’t deny it. 

On the fifth day, my family member who wanted me to tail him sat in the Jeep with me as we pulled up to the address he had been eating breakfast. I had written the street and house number down in case she wanted to go alone but she insisted I went with her. 

We walked up to the door, she rang the doorbell, a woman answered and that’s when she asked to see her husband telling her “I know he is in there with you.”  No chance to hide, no opportunity to deny and caught red handed in the crime of passion, he came out, looked at me with a cold ray of death stare and said to me “you brother, why did you do it?” 

I looked him straight in the eyes and I told him. “Brother, I have covered for you so many times for so many years and  I couldn’t do it no more, you are on your own” and I walked back to the Jeep and drove home. 

That was one of the worst days of my life and filled with regret I let my family talk me into tailing someone so close to me. Betrayal is one of the worst emotions a man can have or feel and on this day I had betrayed someone who did wrong but being human, stumbled and I let my family talk me into doing this deed so vile and so wrong.