California 'Butt Sniffer' Sentenced to 170 Days

Registered sex offender Calese Crowder was sentenced September 8, 2026 to 170 days in Los Angeles County jail for violating his parole, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office confirmed, following his latest arrest for allegedly sniffing women in public.

The sentencing stems from an arrest on August 28 in Glendale, California after police received calls about a man bending down near customers at multiple businesses on West Glenoaks Boulevard. Officers who responded to a store around 3:30 p.m. found witnesses describing a man hunkered down and getting close enough to people to smell them, according to the Glendale Police Department. A separate call from a nearby Marshalls reported the same behavior around the same time.

Police reviewed surveillance footage from both locations and identified Crowder, 39, as the suspect. He was found a short distance away on South Brand Boulevard and arrested on suspicion of a parole violation. He was held without bail ahead of Tuesday's sentencing.

Crowder's arrest record in Glendale and Burbank dates back to 2021, but he first drew national attention in August 2023, when a woman filmed him crouching behind her at a Barnes & Noble in Burbank and posted the video to TikTok, where it was viewed millions of times. In the footage, Crowder tells her he is tying his shoe. Other women later said he had approached them the same way at the same store.

Since then, he has been arrested for similar incidents at a Nordstrom Rack, a Walgreens, and most recently a discount store and grocery store in Glendale. A manager at one of the businesses, Jimmy Koh of Big Sav Discount Store, described the pattern to ABC7 after an earlier arrest:

I know he's harmless, but it's a weird fetish.

State corrections records show Crowder has also served time for burglary, robbery, and drug possession unrelated to the sniffing cases. He was released to parole supervision in June 2025 following a 2024 conviction for attempted first-degree burglary.

The 170-day term covers only the parole violation. It is not his first jail stint tied to this specific behavior, and under his current sex offender registration requirements, each new report gets added to a file that by now mostly repeats itself.