I heard this somewhere on YouTube and I wish I could recall where exactly. The person was recording himself from a dash-cam while driving, and when he noticed that a cop was following him, he said this to another person that was in a car with him
Hey, hang on. That cop is _________ me.
He used this slang word for following me that I'm curious to know.
I'm referring to American English slang.
I would say tailing. That cop has been tailing me for a few blocks sounds the most normal.
Tailgating is not quite what you're looking for—that implies following someone too close, and shadowing is for other contexts.
To further substantiate my answer (from the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus)
verb
informal the paparazzi tailed them: follow, shadow, stalk, trail, track, hunt, hound, dog, pursue, chase.on someone's tail a police car stayed on his tail: CLOSE behind, following closely, (hard) on someone's heels.
From those examples, stalk adds a whole slew of other implications to it, trail is similar and sounds awkward to me, hunt, hound, and dog also add implications. Pursue is also a good one, but isn't quite slang, is it? And chase means to chase.
And, I have even more for you—if you're okay taking it beyond slang. In my personal experiences driving around with my friends, I've said and heard things like that guy's creeping and that guy's been on my ass for a few blocks now.
if the words suggested already aren't good enough for you, you have to make something up yourself. Whatever works with people you know, in your area. This guy on YouTube, I'd imagine, was doing just that.
It might be shadowing. If you look up tail in a thesaurus, there are a few other colloquial terms if this isn't the one you are looking for. (trail, track, stalk, and others.)
In spycraft, surveillance techniques refer to the eye as the one tracking the rabbit. You could say that someone is eyeing your friend.
I would use the word tailing. The cop isn't tailgating because that would mean that the cop is trailing close behind you, but doesn't necessarily mean that their following you. Tailing means they are following you.
Years ago when my friends and I would ride in separate cars, one following the other, we called it a caravan. I think I also heard that word used as a verb, even if I did not, someone has probably used it that way, as in, "We're going to caravan to the party."
Note: I would simply have agreed with the answer "tailing", but OP already said that was not the word used in the video. So we're looking for other possibilities with less prior likelihood now.
I've been "made."
The cop "made" me.
Tailgating.
The cop was tailgating him.
