Sergeant Matt Lee, of Dunedin, said police last week issued a man with a warning for staring through windows in an area close to Cosy Dell.
For the past two weeks, police in Dunedin have conducted a covert operation in neighbouring Kyle St, where one man had been peering through the windows of a collection of flats about 7am a few mornings a week.
Police eventually caught the man in the act and he had been warned for offensive behaviour.
Peeping and creeping activity in the area had been occurring in the street as far back as 2020, and students spoken to by the Otago Daily Times backed up the claims of the existence of a shadowy figure known as the "Cosy Dell Creeper".
A University of Otago student said in 2020 his sister lived in Cosy Dell Rd in an all-woman flat.
"There was this guy that would quietly walk into multiple flats and sit either at the end of their beds or somewhere else in the room and just watch them sleep."
When the girls woke up and noticed him, he would flee and disappear into the night.
The man hit multiple all-female flats in a six-month period.
"They reported it to the police but they said police could not do anything as there was no indicator of his identity because it was pitch black.
"Police couldn’t do anything and Campus Watch could just say lock your doors."
A resident living in the street in 2022 said she would regularly look outside her window and notice a man looking through.
"He would walk up and down the street throughout the day and would stop to stare through our windows.
"Nobody is walking up and down that hill so many times a day, and nobody makes that many pit stops outside flats for any good reason."
She said the experience left her feeling unsafe.
"We were low-key scared to walk home alone, even in the middle of the day."
The man was not active during the night. She said when they called police they could not lay any charges as the activity was limited to daylight hours.
The activity had continued into 2023 and this year with more incidents similar to the two above, but she believed the "Cosy Dell Creeper" was in fact multiple men.
