Training a massive, militarized police force like the one in the U.S. takes a lot of manuals. In a recent hack, the “puppygirl hacker polycule” helped themselves to those manuals, leaking over 8,500 documents. Their target? Lexipol: a private company providing policy and training materials to approximately 20% of U.S. police departments. Overpolicing and the excessive use of force were the American norm even before Donald Trump. Given the ongoing expansion of ICE and other law enforcement departments, those problems are only getting worse. Now, some puppygirl hacktivists are showing they can bite.
Puppygirl Hacker Polycule Targets Lexipol
Cops abusing their authority is nothing new in the U.S. Thanks to a lack of transparency and accountability; however, most police forces suffer minimal repercussions for even egregious violations of the law. According to a statement from puppygirl hacker polycule, there are “not enough hacks against the police,” hence the 8,500+ document breach. The leak includes emails and personal information of Lexipol staff as well as internal documents, police training manuals, and more. The hacker collective went on to post the documents through Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), a non-profit dedicated to publishing, archiving, and analyzing leaks.
Lexipol has faced repeated backlash for its approach to police training. In 2017, the ACLU sent Lexipol a letter demanding that the Texas company eliminate certain illegal and ambiguous directives that could lead to racial profiling and harassment. One policy, for example, states that “the lack of English-language fluency can contribute to suspicion of a federal crime.” Qualified Immunity and police unions have traditionally helped shelter U.S. police from the consequences of such discriminatory actions.
Now that the puppygirl hacker polycule has gotten its paws on these documents, that might be harder. The list of departments affected by the leak is long, including Inglewood, Longbeach, and numerous others. Woof woof, puppygirls.
