Salt Lake City Police

The Salt Lake City Police Department (SLCPD) serves as the primary law enforcement agency for Salt Lake City, Utah, responsible for maintaining public safety, enforcing local and state laws, and providing emergency response services within its jurisdiction. As a municipal police force, its operational scope is centered on the city it serves, addressing a full range of policing duties from patrol and investigations to community engagement. The department's public-facing digital infrastructure, including its official website, is a component of its broader communication and service delivery systems. A significant and publicly documented event in the department's recent history involved a major cyberattack targeting this infrastructure.

On March 13, 2016, the SLCPD website was rendered inaccessible as part of a coordinated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. This incident was executed by the hacktivist collective New World Hackers, who explicitly stated the attack was retaliation for a police shooting that critically injured a 17-year-old Somali refugee. The attackers' public communications framed the action as a demand for justice, specifically calling for the arrest of the officers involved, and positioned it within a wider pattern of hacktivist responses to perceived police brutality in the United States. The SLCPD was not an isolated target; the same campaign simultaneously disrupted the websites of the Salt Lake City International Airport, First Utah Bank, and the Downtown Alliance. While the airport and alliance sites were eventually restored, the bank's website remained offline for a period, highlighting the disruptive capacity of the attack. New World Hackers, a group with a prior history of targeting high-profile organizations such as the BBC and a U.S. presidential campaign, publicly claimed responsibility and linked their actions directly to the specific officer-involved shooting in Salt Lake City. This event underscores the department's experience as a focal point for geographically displaced, ideologically motivated cyber protest tied to local law enforcement actions. The attack brought national attention to the SLCPD's operations through the lens of cybersecurity and public controversy, rather than through any disclosed internal structural or technological attributes of the department itself. No further details regarding the department's size, internal organization, or specific technological defenses are provided in the available incident record.