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The hacktivist collective threatened to release the name on Wednesday but said it was holding back the name before it confirmed the identity of the police officer with a second source.
However on Thursday morning the group published the name of a Ferguson police department officer it claims shot 18-year-old Mike Brown on Saturday.
The name of the officer was released by the @TheAnonMessage Twitter account but the claims have been denied by the St Louis County Police department.
Joel Currier, a reporter for the St Louis Post has tweeted that the police say the name released by Anonymous is false and that officer is not an officer from Ferguson or St. Louis.
St. Louis Co. Police say the name of the officer Bryan P. Willman released by Anonymous is false. Not a #Ferguson or St. Louis Co. officer.
— joelcurrier (@joelcurrier) August 14, 2014
The spokesperson added that emails and websites associated with the department were offline as a result of a cyber attack but these have now been restored and there were no known penetrations.
The group has added that it will release more information about the officer in the coming hours if the St Louis County police department - which is investigating the shooting - doesn't take action.
The group claims it will release a photo of the officer at 10am local time (4pm GMT) on Thursday, with the officer's address released at 12pm local time and if there is no response it will release a "full dox" at 2pm local time.
The hacktivist collective has also released personal information about St Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar on text-sharing website Pastebin including his address, social security number, phone number and date of birth.
Threats
The Ferguson police said on Wednesday that it would not reveal the name of the officer who shot the teenager after threats were made against that officer.
Brown was shot dead by a police officer while out walking with a friend on Saturday.
Police claim Brown struck the officer in question and tried to steal his gun. Brown's friend claimed to reporters the officer told them to move on to the footpath before threatening Brown with the gun.
The incident has led to four days and nights of demonstrations on the streets of Ferguson, with police resorting to using tear gas and rubber bullets on Wednesday night.
Hacktivists say they’ve identified the Ferguson, Missouri law enforcement officer responsible for the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager killed on Saturday following an alleged altercation with the police.
A Twitter account associated with the hacktivist collective Anonymous said on Thursday that they’ve named the officer who killed Brown, 18, over the weekend, and have posted photographs purported to be of the man.
Law enforcement has thus far been unwilling to publicize the name of the officer involved in the shooting death despite calls from the public and press alike. Hackers and activists affiliated with the internationally-dispersed Anonymous collective have vowed to disclose the cop’s identity if officials declined to do so on their own, however, and on Thursday said that Willman is the officer responsible.
“St. Louis County PD claims Bryan Willman doesn’t work for them or #Ferguson PD. We’ll see about that,” TheAnonMessage Twitter account tweeted early Thursday.
Moments later at 11:00 am CST, the same account posted screenshots alleged to have come from Willman’s personal Facebook account earlier this week, and outted him as the shooter.
One screenshot consists of a photo of the man alleged to be the officer in which his Facebook friends discuss his new user name on the social media site: “Scooby Willman.”
“Yep, nobody will find me with that name!” Scooby Willman wrote in a comment accompanying the picture.
“But the job title says it all. Guessing everyone is forgetting about that,” responded a follower.
“You have a good point. All changed!!” replied Willman.
Earlier Thursday, the official Twitter account for the St. Louis County Police Department declined that Willman was an employee of either their office or the Ferguson PD.
Hacktivists involved in the Anonymous campaign known as #OpFerguson told RT’s Andrew Blake on Thursday that they would continue to steadily release information about the officer they believe to have killed Brown, and promised to post his address and other personal information later in the day if law enforcement failed to name the officer on their own.
When asked if the collective is confident they’ve identified the shooter, one Anon answered: “They shouldn’t leave anyone to guess. Period.”
“The US government misfires and accidentally kills citizens all the time, especially overseas, and no one bats an eye. But if a wrong name is released because THEY refuse to release one? That’s cool, because we don’t have the data they do,” one Anon involved in #OpFerguson told Blake.
Later that morning, Twitter suspended the TheAnonMessage account, just short of when its administrators planned on publishing further details about the alleged officer responsible. By that point, though, Anonymous had already released a fair share of details believed to be linked to Brown’s death, including 911 dispatch audio spanning from when he was killed on Saturday until later in the day when police were dispatched in droves to the scene of the crime.
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