Hawthorne dog shooting: City council site crashes, 2nd video released (poll)

Update 7:02 p.m.: The Hawthorne City Council canceled its meeting Tuesday night after its website crashed.

At least one report indicated that the site was brought down by a hacker group called Anonymous, which had allegedly created a video on YouTube threatening revenge for the dog shooting incident.

But Lt. Scott Swain of the Hawthorne Police Department said the site crashed at least a day before the Anonymous threat was made public.

"Our system crashed either Monday night (July 1) or Tuesday morning (July 2), and it was due just to the overwhelming amount of emails to the website," Swain said. The publish date on the alleged Anonymous YouTube video was July 3.

The video that sparked the controversy showed police arresting Leon Rosby and then shooting his dog when it appeared to lunge at an officer. That video quickly went viral, and soon after some people were using social media to distribute email addresses and phone numbers associated with Hawthorne PD, Swain said.

"Our website went out over social media [and people tried] to call my number and send emails. All that just overloaded the website and it went down," he said, adding that the company that hosts the city's website is trying to strengthen the server so it can handle the increased traffic before it goes online again.

Update 3:44 p.m.: The Hawthorne City Council has canceled its meeting Tuesday night after a hacker group called Anonymous allegedly crashed the city's website, reports NBC4. 

Tuesday’s meeting would have been the first time the public could address council members directly about the dog shooting incident. 

Previously: The Hawthorne Police Department has released a second video of police shooting a dog that the department says exonerates the officers of any wrongdoing, the Huffington Post reports.

The second video shows more of Leon Rosby, who was ultimately arrested, speaking with police. It also provides other additional details on the shooting of Rosby’s Rottweiler.

“You can see the officer gives out his hand to let the dog sniff it and tries to grab the leash,” Hawthorne Police public information officer Lt. Scott Swain told the Huffington Post.

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Watch the video (warning: contains graphic content):

While police surrounded a house with someone inside who was allegedly a gunman who robbed two people on Sunday, June 30, Rosby was nearby playing loud music from his car. After dealing with the gunman, police went to arrest Rosby for interfering with the officers during their work.

After handcuffing Rosby, his dog jumped out the window of Rosby’s vehicle and eventually moved toward an officer, who shot the dog four times.

The move proved controversial, resulting in threats to Hawthorne police and attacks by hackers. The Hawthorne Police website has been down since the story began attracting attention online.