There are repeat offenders, and then there is Calese Crowder.
Glendale police arrested the 39-year-old registered sex offender Friday after employees at two stores reported a man crouching around shoppers and apparently trying to smell them.
This is not a case where his alleged specialty requires much euphemism. Crowder has been arrested multiple times over behavior police have described as following women, crouching near them and sniffing their buttocks.
And according to ABC7, at least one Glendale store manager says Friday wasn’t even the first time he had seen Crowder doing it there.
He Was Back At It
Police were called to a business in the 1500 block of Glenoaks Boulevard after witnesses reported a man crouching down and getting unusually close to people.
ABC7 identified the business as Big Sav Discount Store and obtained surveillance footage showing the suspect crouching near an employee who was stocking shelves. Store manager Jimmy Koh told the station he recognized the behavior — and said this was the third time the man had done something similar inside the store.
Koh described it as a “weird fetish,” telling ABC7 that Crowder would crouch down, look around and seemingly wait for an opportunity to sniff a woman’s rear end.
Police didn’t find Crowder there, but another call soon came in from a Marshalls near South Brand Boulevard and East Broadway.
Glendale police spokesman Sgt. Gaik Pobokhian told the Los Angeles Times that store employees reported a man “creeping and crawling around the aisles.” Officers reviewed surveillance footage from both businesses and identified Crowder, who was moving between stores.
Police eventually found him in the 100 block of South Brand Boulevard and took him into custody on suspicion of violating his parole. He was being held without bail.
This Wasn’t New
Crowder’s encounters with police over this particular behavior stretch back years.
In July 2025, officers responded to a Nordstrom Rack in Burbank after someone reported a suspicious man loitering in the women’s department.
Crowder had left before officers arrived, but they found him at a Walmart in the same shopping center. This time, police had a useful vantage point.
According to a Burbank Police Department release, officers used Walmart’s surveillance system to watch Crowder move through the store. Police said he followed a woman into the women’s section, crouched near her and “inappropriately sniffed her buttocks.”
Crowder was arrested, and the Burbank City Attorney’s Office filed one count of loitering with intent to commit a crime. Police said at the time that he was already a registered sex offender on active parole with similar arrests in Glendale and Burbank dating to 2021.
He was arrested again the following month after police said employees at a Burbank Walgreens recognized him during another alleged sniffing incident.
And the history goes further back than the store incidents.
In a 2021 Glendale Police Department release, police described Crowder as having a lengthy history of peeping, prowling and residential burglary activity. The department said he had previously served an eight-year prison sentence after a 2011 case involving peeping and occupied residential burglaries.
Then in 2023, Glendale detectives arrested him again after accusing him of peeping into an occupied home while a family, including children, was inside.
That same year, Michaela Witter posted a TikTok video from a Burbank Barnes & Noble that went viral. She said Crowder had followed her through the store, and the video showed him crouching behind her. When she confronted him, Crowder said he was tying his shoes.
Friday’s arrest puts him back in custody once again.
Whether prosecutors pursue any new charges stemming from what happened inside the Glendale stores is separate from the parole violation that landed him there. For now, Crowder remains behind bars while the court decides what happens next.