by DEREK HAIRE

In what appears to be an attempt to silence his critics, Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin has filed an interstate subpoena for discovery against the owner of the blog MPD Enforcer 2.0, an anonymous website geared toward and run by current and former members of the Memphis Police Department. The anonymous Google Blogspot site has, for the last four months, served as a sort of online water cooler where Memphis' uniformed patrol officers can voice their anonymous discontent with the leadership of MPD, whoM they collectively refer to as "the 12th Floor."



The MPD Enforcer 2.0 quickly became a clearinghouse of unreported or unpublished stories of interest to Memphis police officers, in part thanks to its name. In the 1990s a paper version of the MPD Enforcer was circulated among Memphis Police by hand. Later, during the dawning days of the internet, an online version appeared on the Geocities website.



Today, the MPD Enforcer 2.0, written and maintained by a group of people with no connection to the original paper version of the Enforcer, enjoys new life on Google's Blogspot website, where anyone within or without the MPD can publish whatever they like without fear of recrimination. The only method of contacting the current administrator of the Enforcer 2.0, who operates under the pseudonym Dirk Diggler, is via his AOL email address, and he agreed to an email interview with the Memphis Flyer under the condition that his identity remained secret.



Q: How did you find out about the subpoena? Was it through a friend, an email tip, a letter from AOL, etc?





Director Godwin has filed a motion for discovery of the identity of Mr. Diggler under the Uniform Interstate Depositions and Discovery Act, which has been made law in thirteen states, among them Tennessee and Virginia. According to Channel 24 Eyewitness News reporter Jeni DiPrizio, subpoenas have been sent to AOL, Google, and Zimbio, Inc., but among the three, only AOL is based in a state where the law is applicable. AOL is headquartered in Virginia, but Google and Zimbio are both based in California, and neither company has contacted Mr. Diggler about Director Godwin's legal motion.Under the law, the jurisdiction of the discovery state has the power to quash the subpoena, which in this case is the 20th Judicial Circuit of Virginia. In a previous case, IPA vs. May, Judge Thomas D. Horne of the 20th Circuit issued a protective order on behalf of AOL on the grounds that the plaintiff had failed to furnish a "mandate, writ or commission" to the court under the UFDA as required by Virginia law.To put it in layman's terms, Director Godwin may face a long, tedious legal battle if he truly wants to publicly identify Mr. Diggler and his associates in court. As the original Dirk Diggler might say, "You're not the boss of me, Jack. I'm Dirk Diggler and I say when we roll."