From David Emery,
Your Guide to Urban Legends.
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This email alert from a 'Captain Abraham Sands' of the Jacksonville Police Department warns that evildoers are exposing unsuspecting victims to the AIDS virus by attaching HIV-contaminated needles to gas pump handles

Description: Email hoax
Circulating since: June 2000
Status: False

Email example contributed by R. Anderson, 13 June 2000:

Please read and forward to anyone you know who drives.

My name is Captain Abraham Sands of the Jacksonville, Florida Police Department. I have been asked by state and local authorities to write this email in order to get the word out to car drivers of a very dangerous prank that is occurring in numerous states.

Some person or persons have been affixing hypodermic needles to the underside of gas pump handles. These needles appear to be infected with HIV positive blood. In the Jacksonville area alone there have been 17 cases of people being stuck by these needles over the past five months.

We have verified reports of at least 12 others in various states around the country. It is believed that these may be copycat incidents due to someone reading about the crimes or seeing them reported on the television. At this point no one has been arrested and catching the perpetrator(s) has become our top priority.

Shockingly, of the 17 people who where stuck, eight have tested HIV positive and because of the nature of the disease, the others could test positive in a couple years.

Evidently the consumers go to fill their car with gas, and when picking up the pump handle get stuck with the infected needle. IT IS IMPERATIVE TO CAREFULLY CHECK THE HANDLE of the gas pump each time you use one. LOOK AT EVERY SURFACE YOUR HAND MAY TOUCH, INCLUDING UNDER THE HANDLE.

If you do find a needle affixed to one, immediately contact your local police department so they can collect the evidence.

********* PLEASE HELP US BY MAINTAINING A VIGILANCE AND BY FORWARDING THIS EMAIL TO ANYONE YOU KNOW WHO DRIVES. THE MORE PEOPLE WHO KNOW OF THIS THE BETTER PROTECTED WE CAN ALL BE. **********

Comments: Not to worry. On June 20, 2000, mere days after this dire warning first slammed inboxes across the Internet, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Department issued a press release declaring it a hoax.

"The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office has had no reports of such incidents and there is no 'Capt. Abraham Sands' at the JSO," the notice said. No such incidents been reported anywhere else in the country. Whoever authored the email made every word of it up.

Even so, the message contributes an interesting new wrinkle to the HIV needle-stick rumors circulating in various forms since 1997. Previous variants warned of tainted syringes planted in movie theater seats and pay phone coin slots, not to mention random "stealth prickings" (for lack of a better phrase) in night clubs and other crowded public places. Now we have tainted needles on the handles of gas pumps to contend with. Where will they turn up next?

Copycat pranks

All of the rumors have been investigated and proven false by authorities, with the sole exception of a brief spate of copycat pranks in Virginia at the beginning of 1999. According to police there, actual hypodermic needles were found in the coin slots of public phones and in bank night deposit slots in a couple of small towns in the area. None were found to be contaminated with HIV or any other biological agent. Presumably the pranksters were imitating rumors that had already been circulating rampantly for months.

Unsubstantiated though it may be, the belief that unknown assailants are intentionally spreading AIDS by hiding contaminated needles in public places remains popular, especially on the email forwarding circuit. One reason is that these tales, and other urban legends like them, provide an outlet for our fears — of strangers, of the motives of some of the more marginal members of society, and of AIDS itself. They are spread in the form of cautionary tales, though they don't really function as such — not on any literal level, at least — because they fail to address the primary way HIV is actually transmitted: unsafe sex.

Pump at your own risk!

Which raises an interesting point. Each of these made-up scenarios functions exceedingly well as a metaphor for a sexual act. Each of them, by virtue of the fact that a needle-prick is involved, symbolically associates the transmission of AIDS with an act of penetration. Consider the allusive charm of the notion that one risks exposure to HIV simply by inserting one's finger into the grimy coin slot of a much-used public phone. The imagery may not be pretty, but it's uncannily apt.

Now we are being warned to be careful when pumping gas. Take all due precautions, we are told, before sliding the nozzle into the tank.

Sound advice? Metaphorically speaking... yes!