Police: 'Peeping Tom' filmed young women near UC Berkeley

An Oakland man has been charged with secretly peeping at three young women near UC Berkeley and filming two of them, court papers show.

At least two of the three women were UC Berkeley students, authorities said.

Berkeley police, who have been investigating the peeping case for at least six months, found 23 videos on the suspect's cellphone showing five women who had been filmed, including one who was in the shower, according to court records.

The women "did not appear to be aware they had been filmed," police wrote in charging papers.

In one of the charged incidents, from August 2022, a man was spotted looking into a young woman's window on Spruce Street, near Hearst Avenue north of campus, two days in a row.

In another, in April 2023, a man climbed onto the second-story ledge of a Dwight Way apartment, near Bowditch Street in the Southside neighborhood, and was seen looking into a woman's window with his phone in his hand.

Lucas White. BPD

That night, police detained Lucas White, a 46-year-old Oakland man, about three blocks away.

They found him parked at Bowditch and Channing Way with his pants unzipped and his genitals visible, police wrote in court papers.

When they arrested White, they seized his cellphone as evidence, which is how they discovered photographs and dozens of videos of unsuspecting women, according to charging papers.

In June, police sought the public's help in identifying a location from White's cellphone videos that was linked to a third young woman, according to BPD.

A Berkeley Scanner reader recognized the location, on a block north of the UC Berkeley campus, and alerted police, according to court papers.

White made eight recordings of the woman as she moved around her apartment, police wrote.

Last week, the Alameda County district attorney's office charged White with peeking and invasion of privacy by device in connection with that incident.

White had previously been charged, in August, with two counts of peeking and one count of invasion of privacy by device in connection with the incidents on Spruce and on Dwight.

All of the counts are misdemeanors and fall under California's "Peeping Tom" laws.

Read more about sex crimes in Berkeley.

After his arrest last year, in September 2022, White claimed he had been "dumpster diving" near the Spruce Street address, and "stated that it seemed like a poor decision in retrospect," police wrote in court papers.

Police identified White in that case because the woman saw him and had her husband take a photograph of the peeper's motorcycle license plate — which came back to Lucas White as the registered owner.

In court papers, police noted that White had also been linked to a "similar call for service" on Prospect Street — also blocks from campus — in 2021.

When police arrested White in April 2023, and found him with his pants unzipped, they also found him with "a condom, several used tissues, two bottles filled with a semi-transparent thick liquid substance, and a cell phone," according to charging papers.

Victims from Spruce Street identified him as the man they had seen lurking outside on Dwight Way that night, police wrote.

Surveillance footage also captured White looking into a window there, according to BPD.

White told police he had urinated near an apartment complex on Dwight but "denied looking into any windows."

White has been out of custody since April when he was released on his own recognizance.

He is scheduled for an attorney and plea hearing Nov. 2 at Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse in Oakland, according to court papers.