There should be laws against this. A judge should be able to tell when a behavior is harassment, and forbid the harasser from contacting the person again with more severe charges if he does again.
It should definitely be enough for police to act if you establish that you demanded that contact cease and and that it continued unabated. In this case it seems that the author may not have clearly established it, perhaps did not understand the best way to frame this, and police were unhelpful and didn't want to be involved unless there were threats or a domestic incident involved (where mandatory arrests come into play).