A homeless man chased a UC Berkeley student into her own apartment, climbed over a security gate to follow her inside — and Berkeley police let him walk the next day, citing insufficient evidence.

Eden Winograd was walking her dog near her off-campus apartment around 8 p.m. on Sept. 15 when 50-year-old Kenneth Kenji Stine ran toward her, according to the New York Post. She raced back to her building, but Stine climbed over the security gate seconds after she got inside. "My heart sank. I was out of breath," Winograd told NBC Bay Area. "I don't want to be chased and have to watch someone claw their way up a wall to get into where I live." She made it into an elevator and escaped to her apartment.

Police took more than an hour to respond, citing other priority calls including a missing autistic child and a domestic violence incident, according to the Berkeley Scanner. The following night, Winograd spotted Stine sleeping on the street and called police again. Officers detained him, identified him — and released him. The incident was being treated as misdemeanor trespassing, and investigators said they could establish Stine ran in Winograd's direction but couldn't definitively prove he chased her.

Frustrated, Winograd posted surveillance footage to TikTok. It has racked up more than 2 million views. A slowed-down clip appeared to show Stine pulling an object from his pocket. "You guys don't do anything until it's too late," she said. "This happens too often to too many people."

Stine was finally hauled into jail Tuesday — not for chasing Winograd, but on an unrelated outstanding warrant that gave officers legal authority to book him. Prosecutors are now deciding whether to file new charges.

Stine's online footprint raises questions about why someone this unwell was left roaming the streets to begin with. He has written on Facebook about "hearing voices in my head continuously," which he attributed to what he claimed was a secret DARPA program reading and transmitting thoughts. On YouTube, he calls himself "God."

This is the fruit of years of progressive decriminalization in Berkeley and across California. When misdemeanor trespassing is the ceiling for a man who scales a security gate pursuing a woman into her home, the system isn't protecting anyone. When officers take over an hour to respond to a woman being chased, the defund-the-police logic has real casualties.

It's not just Berkeley. Near UMass Boston, senior Carly Nguyen posted on TikTok that two individuals yelled the N-word and an anti-Asian slur at her and her mother as they left campus, NBC10 Boston reported. Nguyen said she believes the individuals attend BC High, which is now investigating and called the alleged behavior "entirely unacceptable." Nguyen wants accountability: "I want them to be expelled. I want the harshest punishment possible."

The co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, Cynthia Choi, told NBC10 Boston that what Nguyen experienced "is actually not unique," noting nearly 50% of Asian Americans in the group's survey reported discrimination, including 15% in educational settings.

Two campuses, two young women, two institutional failures. In Berkeley, progressive prosecutors couldn't find grounds to hold a man who climbed a wall to chase a student. In Boston, it took a viral TikTok to force an institution to take racist harassment seriously. The question isn't whether the system is broken — it's who it's designed to protect.