Dear Paul Geiger

A letter we received - nothing noted the contents were confidential in any way, shape or form, so we present it to you:

• Dear SCC,
  
  Today I received a phone call from a friend telling me that there were a number of unflattering statements about me on your website. I went there and saw claims that I fired the FOP's labor law firm so I could negotiate the police bargaining agreement and bill the FOP for it. There were also a number of other lies about "settlements" paid to unnamed secretaries. If you knew anything about what goes on at the FOP, you would know that I am the person responsible for stopping the practice of having in house attorneys billing their employer for legal services. Additionally, no settlement has ever been paid to a secretary regarding any allegation against me. You will kindly remove all references to me from your website by midnight tonight. If I see any commentary about me and my job performance, I will bring an action against you and any anonymous defamers. I have sent you this warning previously, and I am not going to send it again. Keep my name off of your website.
  
  Finally, you should be aware that it is not particularly difficult to obtain your identity and the identity those that comment on SCC through the court system.
  
  I value my reputation and I will take the appropriate action to protect it.
  
  Paul Geiger

SCC replies:

• Mr. Geiger,
  
  Apologies for not getting back to you sooner. We check e-mail every other day so we missed your midnight deadline. But even if we had found the letter, we have no mechanism in place for scanning through hundreds, even thousands of comments, from an unknown time frame. As we related in our previous correspondence, should you wish something deleted, we'll need the post name, the date and time so we can find it in an efficient manner.
  
  You seem to miss the point of a blog, so we'll take this opportunity to enlighten you a bit. This is a conduit. What appears in the front page under our bylines is our responsibility, nothing else. We've read the law and consulted with actual lawyers versed in internet law and we are under no legal obligation that we are aware of to verify the veracity of every single comment that goes up. Those "live comment streams" we see on so many national news outlets accusing various figures of all sorts of conspiracies, criminal acts, malfeasance - all live, all uncensored and all unverifiable? We don't see CNN in court for any of that.
  
  We noticed that when we "google" your name, the second post is a sexual harassment action filed against you covered by CBS News. When we add the words "sexual harassment" to the search, we find ABC 7 coverage and the actual lawsuit filed against you by Marie Marrero, which the internal investigation by Asher, Gittler and D'Alba is alleged to be credible and with merit. Channel 7 also references the previous 2005 lawsuit by a pregnant attorney in the FOP Office:
  
  
  • This isn't the first time the police union has had to fight charges against its general counsel. In 2005 the FOP was sued by one of its female attorney's who claimed that before she was fired after Paul Geiger made sexist remarks about her pregnancy. That case ended up being settled out of court.
  
  If you are arguing that since this is a lawyer, not a secretary, whose settlement was paid by our membership dues, then we'll grant you the point, no matter how nit-picky it is.  In fact, you are welcome to point out in the comment section that no secretary has been paid a settlement so far, but that a pregnant female lawyer received an out of court settlement from the FOP due to something something, Paul Geiger, something without admitting fault - or however you lawyers cover the issue.  We'll do it for you right here.
  
  Due to the facts above, we are prepared to argue that as the paid legal representative of a labor organization numbering in the thousands, you are a de facto public figure (limited purpose public figure) and therefore, the burden of proving libel falls squarely in the realm that a "reasonable person" would have to believe a comment to be true. Again, we specify "comment," not a "post" on the main page.  "Actual malice" also comes into play, and as you state that we are without knowledge of the FOP inner-working, malice is an uphill climb.  You would additionally have to prove monetary damages of some form.  Seeing as you work for the FOP, your only client as far as we can tell, and you have suffered no damages to your employment, even due to the multiple sexual harassment complaints on file over the past seven years, we think that avenue is going to be a difficult one.  Your work history, as the paid representative of thousands of police officers, is of paramount interest to each and every one of us.
  
  You are welcome to refute anything you come across in the comment sections. If you are party to some facts that the rest of us aren't, please enlighten us and the readers so that errors such as you are alleging aren't repeated. Additionally, mention it to your bosses that the knife cuts both ways - their IP addresses are just as traceable, maybe more so as their IP e-mails can be compared to those attached to comments on the board. Just food for thought.
  
  As a side note, in your honor, we are creating Rule ZERO in our right hand column. That should cover some of your concerns.  We look forward to your list of comments you object to.
  
  SCC

Just thought everyone should know how our dues money is being spent today. An insignificant blog, hated by the Department brass, the city government, the FOP, and now the FOP's attorney. If the blog disappears, you know exactly who to blame.

FOP meeting next Tuesday.