Tamir Rice
Outraged by the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by Cleveland police over the weekend, the “hacktivist” group known as Anonymous set its sights on the official website for the city of Cleveland, shutting down the city’s site and vowing to do the same to any municipality with “ignorant, untrained rookie cops.”
Anonymous released a video Monday attacking Cleveland police for their improper response to the 911 call warning that a juvenile was scaring other children with a gun that was probably fake.
The hacker group, which burst onto the scene in Ferguson with warnings to the police if they mistreated protesters after Michael Brown’s death, clearly sees itself as some sort of activist vigilante group, protecting the public from government abuse and overreach.
“This rookie officer apparently was not trained. The police department he works for is to blame for this lack of appropriate training,” the collective said in a released statement. “Officers are equipped with many non-lethal options such as Taser guns. Why did he not use a Taser on this child? Shooting him in cold blood was not necessary with these non-lethal options available.”
The group used words like “moronic” to describe a police force that would respond to the scene and shoot a 12-year-old boy with a BB gun, saying it was ludicrous for anyone to think the officers “feared for their lives.”
The city of Cleveland’s website was inaccessible for much of the day on Monday, as the Twitter hashtag #TangoDown flooded the Internet—which is one of the indicators of an Anonymous-affiliated attack.
A key question emerging is why the police dispatcher didn’t relay to the officers the crucial bit of information that came from the 911 caller complaining about Tamir scaring other kids with his gun: The caller twice said the gun was “probably fake.” The caller also said the person carrying it was “probably a juvenile.”
Toward the end of the 911 call, the caller added, “I don’t know if it’s real or not.”
But that information stopped at the dispatcher. Cleveland police officials say the two officers—who have not been identified—who responded to the scene told the boy to raise his hands, but instead Tamir reached for the black gun in his waistband. Perhaps his intent was to show them it was fake—but we’ll never know. Once he pulled it out, one of the officers opened fire, shooting twice, with one of the bullets hitting Tamir in the stomach. He died at MetroHealth Medical Center early Sunday morning.
Last week, Anonymous has set its sights on the KKK after the hate group threatened Ferguson protesters with violence.
Calling the campaign OpKKK, the hacktivists disrupted KKK websites and publicly released personal information on KKK members, according to the techy website Motherboard.com.
Anonymous released a video on YouTube saying that while it respected the KKK’s right to free speech, the hate group had overstepped the mark by threatening physical violence.
Two weeks ago, the Missouri chapter of the infamous terrorist organization put out fliers to warn the public that they “will use lethal force as provided under Missouri Law to defend ourselves.”
The leader of the Missouri chapter, Frank Ancona, told MSNBC why the KKK distributed the warning fliers.
“Actually it’s addressing the people who are making these terroristic threats and letting them know that the people of Missouri have rights too,” Ancona said.
Ancona believes that his warning fliers addressed to “the terrorists masquerading as ‘peaceful protestors’” is making the situation better in Ferguson.
Motherboard said Anonymous had “hit a range of KKK websites over the weekend through to today, including kkk.com, unskkkk.com and traditionalistamericanknights.com, with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Those sites were intermittently down today. At least two Twitter accounts have also been compromised: @KluKluxKlanUSA and @YourKKKCentral.”
