Key Takeaways
- Glendale police arrested Calese Crowder, a 39-year-old registered sex offender, after two stores reported a man crouching near shoppers and apparently trying to smell them.
- Crowder has faced more than 40 arrests and repeated allegations of stalking women through Southern California stores, crouching behind them, sniffing their backsides, peeping, and prowling.
- Police identified Crowder through surveillance footage and arrested him on suspicion of violating parole; he remains jailed without bail after serving 135 days for a previous parole violation.
Two stores. One afternoon. And yet another arrest for California’s alleged serial butt sniffer.
According to The New York Post, Calese Crowder, the 39-year-old registered sex offender whose repeated arrests for allegedly sniffing women’s butts in public have made him infamous across Southern California, is back in custody after police say his unmistakable routine resurfaced in Glendale. Crowder was arrested on suspicion of violating his parole and is being held without bail.
The latest episode began around 3:30 p.m. on August 28, when Glendale police were called to a business on West Glenoaks Boulevard. A man was reportedly “hunkered down” inside the store, getting far too close to people and seemingly trying to smell them.
Then came a second call: A similarly behaving man had been spotted at a Marshalls near South Brand Boulevard and East Broadway. Investigators pulled surveillance footage from both businesses, identified Crowder and found him shortly afterward on South Brand Boulevard.
The allegations sound outlandish. For shoppers in Glendale and neighboring Burbank, however, they have become unsettlingly familiar.
Crowder has been accused of stalking women through stores, crouching behind them and sniffing their backsides in incidents dating back to 2021. Local outlets report that his extensive record includes more than 40 arrests, along with separate allegations of peeping and prowling. Many of those cases have unfolded within the same section of Los Angeles County.
Crowder became internet-famous for all the wrong reasons in August 2023, when a woman filmed him crouching behind her at a Barnes & Noble in Burbank. When she turned around and confronted him, he claimed he was tying his shoes.
The explanation did little to help once the TikTok clip took off, putting his face—and the deeply specific allegations against him—in front of millions of viewers. Around the same time, Glendale police arrested Crowder over a separate peeping incident at a family’s home while children were inside.
Even viral exposure and repeated arrests apparently did not bring the string of allegations to an end. Crowder was busted twice within two months during the summer of 2025.
In one case, cameras at a Nordstrom Rack allegedly captured him following a shopper through the women’s department before dropping behind her. Burbank police said the footage showed Crowder “engaging in lewd behavior by inappropriately sniffing her buttocks.”
Officers later found him at a nearby Walmart.
By September, Crowder had admitted to violating his parole and was sentenced to 135 days in Los Angeles County Jail.
