An alert parent walking his kids to school around 8am on Aug. 28 detained a man outside Los Gatos’ Louise Van Meter Elementary School after he spotted him following girls with a smartphone in his hand. By 8:15am, 63-year-old Los Gatos resident John Alan Hale was in handcuffs along Los Gatos Boulevard.

I happened to pass the cluster of police cars and saw two scraped and bloodied men—one, a girl dad who had apprehended a man he believed was engaging in inappropriate conduct, and the other a Los Gatos homeowner with grown kids who’d shown up outside a school shortly before classes began.

The parent, who identified himself as Khalid, said Hale was walking behind students and was holding a device obscured by a wallet below their skirts. Khalid said that when he spoke to the man—whom police l

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