Did Anita Sarkeesian fabricate her story about contacting the authorities?
Late in 2014 I contacted the SFPD to ask questions about Anita's suspicious claim that they had blown her off when she reported threatening communications. Since that time, the situation has been muddied: following this incident she received confirmed threats that the FBI investigated, and they have been conflated with this incident. Nonetheless, his incident remains highly suspect. Even in the official documentation from the FBI, which identifies many of the harassers who contacted her in later months, this particular event seems to have been 'swept under the rug'. Something hinky happened here, but at this point it's just another fact lost to history, good luck convincing anyone who wants to disagree with you. Transcript can be found here: http://www.staresattheworld.com/2014/09/update-anita-sarkeesians-accusations-impropriety-sfpdfbi-gamergate/
You left the message, and so we're trying to see what is it that we can help you with.
Yes, just give me a second here.
So all right, so let me, I'm just trying to reset my brain right now.
So yeah, David Sarini, I'm a freelance writer, journalist, filmmaker.
And could I just confirm your name again as to who I'm speaking to?
What can we help you with?
Alrighty, well, I'm calling about an incident which occurred in your district on the 26th of August.
It was to a Miss Sarkeesian.
She's a prominent cultural critic, and she received a number of death threats over Twitter, which wound up driving her out of her own home.
This has been this has been reported quite a bit through the gaming media as well as in other mainstream sources like the LA Times and the UK Telegraph.
I'm very familiar with the case or with the incident.
There's nothing, there's no record of any incident occurring on the 28th of August.
I've been trying to research this for the past two days.
So if you have a way to contact this person and ask them for a case number, we would appreciate that.
There's no record from our dispatch center that I called and asked.
There's no record of any report being taken.
So when she's when I saw her tweet that says authorities, I need to make sure that she reported to San Francisco police and how she did it because there's no record.
Okay, thank you.
I just have a couple of other questions about how you typically deal with these cases, if you don't mind.
So now she said that the officers told her she should stop doing her cultural commentary if she was receiving threats.
Is this the sort of thing that you would say to a victim of harassment?
No, but that's hearsay.
So it's third-party information, so I'm not going to speculate on whether or not that was said.
But we wouldn't say that to someone who's trying our report.
Would that possibly be disciplinary action if an officer were to say such a thing?
We're not going to talk about hypothetical situations because it's hearsay.
Understood.
There's no record of that incident occurring, and so I'm not going to speculate and therefore it's inappropriate to make comments on that.
Understood.
Now I have some colleagues that have received harassment in other districts and the police there recommended that they not respond to it or discuss it online once the investigation has begun.
Is that your department's policy?
And if not, what advice would you give to somebody that was receiving threats?
Well, if someone takes if someone receives a threat, we're talking specifically online or via text messaging or Twitter and emails, that type of stuff.
It's important to document it.
So they should somehow save either a text message or an email or a tweet if they can capture that and bring it to the police station as evidence that would be booked.
It's very important that they document it as long as they can do so safely.
But it's very important because again, if they don't do it, and this continues, and you never know what can happen, right?
So at least document it.
If the department has any leads, we will do our best because we take it seriously when someone makes threats against someone's life.
So we would ask that they follow a report, bring the evidence, so we could initiate an investigation.
All right.
And I guess just one final question.
Would it be, would you, your department, handle online harassment, or is this the sort of thing that you would pass on to the FBI or somebody else?
Well, it certainly depends on the nature of what the threat says.
Typically, if it's just threats, our department would handle it.
If it's anything more significant as far as maybe local domestic terrorism, that type of stuff, it would go to SBI or federal agents, but typically the city agencies that would handle the catchment incident.
Okay, so if it was an online anonymous account, like we don't know who the person is, they just created a fake account to send death threats.
Would you possibly pass that on?
Because it's not a local, it's like it's not a domestic violence thing between a local couple?
We would certainly investigate it.
If we feel that this is something that's probably on larger scale, we would share with our regional partners or even federal agents.
But every case is individual and unique and different.
But typically, if it's something that seems more significant, then yes, it would be shared among our law enforcement partners.
Okay.
And you know, you said you were trying to get a hold of Ms. Sarkeesian because you're not even, you've never heard of it.
You would like the case number that she received if she reported it as she claims.
That is correct.
Right.
So I do have a report where Ms. Sarkeesian was a victim of threats as well, but this was back in March of this year.
So that's the only record I found.
But there's nothing as of yet from August 20th or 29th.
Okay, well, I was just going to say, as part of my ongoing investigation, I'm going to tell you about her.
Yeah.
But there are multiple police agencies in San Francisco, so I want to make sure that she reports to San Francisco police.
And I did call the local precinct where she lives.
They don't have any record of an investigation with her name currently.
So this is the only thing that came up in my system was a case from March of this year.
Okay, so this is you are the public representation person for the entire San Francisco area, all of the districts within.
San Francisco Police Department, yes.
Okay, I think that is, that's all of my questions.
Thank you very much.
You've been very informative, and I hope you have a good day.
You too, sir.
Take care.
Goodbye.
All right, bye.
Well, there you have it, folks.
There was a report back in March that she was being harassed.
There has been no reports that they are aware of happening in August.
And they would actually like to get a hold of her and find out about this case number.
And they do seem to take death threats fairly seriously.
There you have it.
Support us on the Sarkeesian effect.
Okay, like this, this just costing me some long distance minutes, all right?
But actually doing a documentary, this is there's a lot more work that we need to do.
There's a lot of people we need to go talk to.
And unlike some of the prominent figures I've mentioned who've agreed to be on the documentary already, a lot of these people are private.
A lot of these people work in, for instance, game development.
And if they simply write if they write a blog post about this, or if they show up on my podcast talking about what they know, then, well, that's not an authoritative source, and that can be construed as harassment, even though it's not.
So with making the documentary, however, as an official respected source that will go on Wikipedia, that will go on IMDB, at this point they can claim harassment if they are fired, because we will be investigating all of their claims as well and confirming their claims.
There were a couple of bits of this video censored because it was you don't need to know where Anita lives.
That's not relevant information to this.
But the relevant information is that she apparently has not contacted the local police department.
