Notorious hacktivist group Anonymous has reportedly disabled the Minneapolis Police Department website, in retaliation for the murder of George Floyd. The decentralized hacker collective also pledged to expose the department’s ‘many crimes to the world.’
The Minneapolis PD site, as well as the City of Minneapolis’ site, became inaccessible late Saturday, according to multiple user reports.
By early Sunday, the sites were still experiencing access problems, sporadically requiring visitors to enter “captchas” verifying they weren’t bots in a front-end hosted by internet security firm Cloudflare — a signal the sites were experiencing a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, designed to render an internet service unusable by flooding it with bogus traffic.
The death of Floyd, an unarmed and defenseless black man who died in police custody at the hands of officer Derek Chauvin, has caused mass unrest across the US, with protests surging each day from coast to coast.
In Anonymous’ latest video, the masked narrator condemns the department’s reputation for police brutality, noting that the 46-year-old’s death is ‘merely the tip of the iceberg’. “This travesty has gone on far too long, and now the people have had enough,” they said.
The Anonymous member said the “blatant disregard for human life exhibited by officers is undeniable”, particularly considering all evidence pertaining to the incident so far clearly indicates that Floyd complied with officers’ orders.
“Officers who kill people and commit other crimes need to be held accountable just like the rest of us. Otherwise, they will believe that they have a license to do whatever they want. People have had enough of this corruption and violence from an organization that promises to keep them safe,” he said.
“After the events of the past few years, many people are beginning to learn that you are not here to save us but rather you are here to oppress us and carry out the will of the criminal ruling class. You are here to keep order for the people in control, not to provide safety for the people who are controlled. In fact, you are the very mechanism that elites use to continue their global system of oppression.”
The hackers allege that in the past two decades, 193 people have died at the hands of the Minneapolis police force, citing high-profile deaths such as Jamar Clarke, Philando Castile, Justine Diamond, Thurman Blevins and Brian Quinones.
The narrator added:
“In the vast majority of police killings, the only one left alive to tell the story is the officer who took the person’s life… and thus the cycle is able to continue because none of these murderers ever face any justice for their actions.
These officers must face criminal charges and officer Chauvin especially should face murder charges. Unfortunately, we do not trust your corrupt organization to carry out justice so will be exposing your many crimes to the world.
Soon after the video started circulating the web, the Minneapolis Police Department’s website was disabled and taken offline, presumably by the hackers. The group’s message concludes with: ‘We are legion. Expect us.’”
Watch:
Derek Chauvin, 44, is due to appear in court on Monday, June 1, charged with the murder of Floyd last week. The three other officers present at the time of Floyd’s death have also been fired from the department, with Hennepin County Prosecutor Mike Freeman saying he anticipates charges against them.
