BoingBoing

BoingBoing, "a directory of wonderful things," is one of my favorite blogs. I mentioned to a friend that I had, in fact been BoingBoinged twice, and he said he knew, and said that I must have mentioned this on my website, right?

Well, I haven't, until now.

Here's what happened, the short version. Cory Doctorow posted about Phillip Sandifer, a University of Florida Ph.D student, who wrote some fiction and posted it on LiveJournal. One creepy and hilarious story, called "I Am Ready to Serve My Country," is a first-person story of someone preparing to become a secret agent by indulging in some murderous and sociopathic "training. " (I recommend you read it.) The story involves some creepiness and violence, which is important in what follows.

Sandifer is an active Wikipedia editor. Apparently, someone who really disliked his Wikipedia efforts sent an anonymous email to the UF cops that Sandifer was a sociopath himself — because of course anyone who posts something first-person and sociopathic on Livejournal must be a sociopath himself.

As Cory posted on Boing Boing, the UF cops bought it, of course, and went ape.

That's where the story was when I came in. Cory had already written that the UF cops had asked Sandifer for his fingerprints and DNA. A spokesperson for the UF police department denied this, of course. Public-spirited Florida resident — and lawyer — that I am, I decided to see exactly what was going on in Gainesville, by sending the UF Police Department a public records request. I emailed Cory a copy of my request letter. This got me BoingBoinged for the first time.

Barely two weeks later, without having to cajole (or sue) anyone, I got a fat envelope from the UF police department. It didn't comply with my original, complete request, but what they did send — an "Offense Report" generated from their internal database — seemed sufficient.

UF police officer Stacy Ettel admitted to twice having asked Sandifer — in what seems to me, even from her notes, to have been a threatening way — whether he had ever provided fingerprints for any reason, and once about physical evidence. As Officer Ettel wrote, "I advised Mr. Sandifer that obtaining physical evidence is as easy as obtaining discarded trash." (So much for the Public Information Officer.)

And even this isn't the worst of it. As Cory wrote,

The report is remarkable for what it doesn't say: it is an apparent fabrication that contradicts the eyewitness reports of everyone I spoke to involved in this story. We're left to decide whether Sandifer and his advisors are lying, or whether it's the police — who ducked reporters, used lies to intimidate Sandifer, and exhibited the poor judgement in investigating someone for unspecified murders because he published fiction about a murder.

It's an embarrassment to the University of Florida that its police force can attempt to dictate to English students and faculty what fiction can and can't be published.

So I scanned the report into my computer, and after redacting the driver's license numbers and so forth of everyone in it, at Cory's suggestion, Cory asked Sandifer if he would mind the report being posted to Boing Boing. Sandifer said okay, and I got BoingBoinged for the second time.

And all for doing what I see as my civic duty. Cool!