West Valley City Police Facebook page hacked, taken down

WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah — A hacker took over the West Valley City Police Department’s Facebook page Thursday night and filled it with posts criticizing the U.S. The police department said it is investigating the hack and has shut down its page.

The WVCPD said on Thursday that someone got into their page and proceeded to post from their account.

The hacker or hackers posted a mix of political cartoons criticizing America’s human rights record, photos of Che Guevara, plus a video of Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd.

The WVCPD issued a statement an hour after these posts went up and said it was investigating the attack.

“We regret to inform the public that unauthorized access was gained to our social media account, leading to the dissemination of content which does not align with the values, principles, and professionalism of our police department,” said WVCPD Public Information Officer Roxeanne Vainuku in a statement.

The police department said they’re beefing up their cyber protections to prevent this from happening again.

Not uncommon

Earl Foote of Nexus IT Solutions said these types of hacks are much more common than you’d think.

“There are about seven million Facebook pages or accounts hacked every month. Oftentimes, it does involve the account owner, you know, taking some missteps,” Foote said.

Foote added that it’s not likely it’ll be easy to find the hacker.

“Hackers are not dumb. You know, they’re very very crafty in covering their tracks.”

The WVCPD’s Facebook page remains shut down.

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