AkronPhoenix420, Jayland Walker, and an Oversight Office That Still Cannot Force Akron Police to Act

The aim of Robinson was to bring attention to the hypocrisy of the United States judicial system. He accomplished this not only through his operations, but also inadvertently through his arrest.

Location: Akron, Ohio – Yet another Anonymous member by the name of James Robinson, who goes by the handle @AkronPhoenix420, was arrested by “The Man” or, law enforcement. Robinson has been charged by the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) for causing damages intentionally to a protected computer following the shut down of Akron city websites. Him being arrested, and the widespread attention as a result to his initiatives, has put the spotlight on the corrupt practices of Akron police.

Although incidents of police corruption in the United States are wide spreading, numerous regions and cities seem to be more prone to abuses by police than others. Akron is a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, a city with track record for police corruption, Akron doesn’t appear to be any different. This has been confirmed by other groups of Anonymous in the area of Akron.

Amanda Garrett of the Akron Beacon Journal reports that “whoever shut down the city of Akron’s website apparently believed Akron police and the city justice system were corrupt.” The passiveness of this statement implies the “apparent belief” in this corruption is unfounded. After looking further into the Akron police’s history however, there were decades of corruption uncovered.

Officers have been fired for unnecessary force, and charged for conspiracy connected to extortion and robbery. Reports reveal they’ve arrived to work drunk, and one former police sergeant critically injured his wife after he wrecked their vehicle while intoxicated. He was sentenced to two-years probation, and ordered to complete a three-day DUI program.

Officer Zachary Rosen was reinstated after being fired for kicking a handcuffed suspect in the face. Meanwhile, a fascist park ranger officer had beaten an elderly couple simply for honking at him.

During 2016, an officer by the name of Michael Simmons had stolen over $26,000 from a charity fund used to purchase gifts for poor children. He was ordered to pay back $15,000.

At the start of 2018, James Nice, former Akron police chief, was charged with misconduct and pressed to resign. According to reports, James Nice made attempts to interfere in a criminal case involving his nephew. He also had coerced a female employee into a relationship.

Then there’s the case of Xavier McMullen, a 17-year-old boy who, according to police, fatally shot himself with a gun in the back of a patrol car. Xavier’s hands were handcuffed behind his back, yet he was somehow able to fatally shoot himself in the head. One officer was docked 24-hours pay as a disciplinary measure. Xavier’s family is still unsure of events, and hasn’t received answers from the Akron police.

According to Bleeping Computer’s condescending report on Robinson, Federal Agents were able to track him down after he connected to his Twitter account from his home IP address. Lesson being; don’t forget to use a VPN.

Robinson’s aim was bringing attention to the hypocrisy of the United States judicial system. He accomplished this not only through his operations, but also inadvertently through his arrest. While the FBI focused all of their attention on this one Anon, Akron police will most likely be allowed to continue their criminal activities and go unchecked.

You can show your support for Robinson by sharing his story. Follow the hashtag, #OpFreePhoenix420 for further information. Additionally, you can show your support through FreeAnons.org, a network set in place for assistance to arrested Anons.

The story did not end with Robinson’s arrest. He was indicted under the federal computer-fraud statute and ultimately pleaded guilty to damaging protected computers. On October 3, 2019, U.S. District Judge Christopher Boyko sentenced him to six years in federal prison and ordered him to pay $668,684 in restitution to the city of Akron. Court filings tied the @AkronPhoenix420 persona not only to the August 1, 2017 takedown of akronohio.gov and akroncops.org, but also to a string of 2018 DDoS operations against targets that included the Ohio Department of Public Safety, the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Information Systems Agency, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Treasury. Investigators traced the attacks through Charter/Spectrum and Verizon records back to an internet connection and phone registered in Robinson’s name, and a May 2018 search of his Akron home turned up a Guy Fawkes mask and a cracked-screen phone matching one seen in the AkronPhoenix420 videos. The severity of that sentence, set against the comparatively light discipline handed to the Akron officers documented above, only sharpened the point Robinson had tried to make about how unevenly the justice system applies its weight.

Akron After the Arrest

The department Robinson was pointing at did not get quieter. In the early hours of June 27, 2022, eight Akron officers fired 94 rounds at Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Black man, striking him 46 times after a traffic stop and a short chase. Police said he had fired from the car during the pursuit. A handgun was later found in the vehicle. He was not holding a firearm when he was killed. A grand jury declined to charge the officers in April 2023. In October 2024 the city settled with Walker’s family for $4.85 million. On December 6, 2024, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Akron could keep the names of those eight uncharged officers off public records, treating them as uncharged suspects who might still face a federal case. The pattern this article documented — force, light internal discipline, and a federal hammer reserved for the person who shut down a website — did not age out.

The city later built the kind of oversight Robinson’s supporters said did not exist, and then limited what it could do. After Walker was killed, Akron voters created the Office of the Independent Police Auditor and a Citizens’ Police Oversight Board. Anthony Finnell has held the auditor’s job since March 2024. By May 2026 his office and the board had reviewed 310 uses of force and citizen complaints in a single annual cycle and agreed with the police department’s own findings about 90 percent of the time. Since Finnell started, the running total was 567 reviews, with 518, or 91.36 percent, in concurrence. He has been careful to say a high concurrence rate does not mean officers never broke policy. It means the department’s internal investigators usually classified the incident the same way he did, including when they found misconduct. Signal Akron reported that, as of February 9, 2026, the city had still not answered 43.59 percent of the recommendations his office sent to the mayor and City Council.

On May 7, 2026, a rewritten use-of-force policy took effect at midnight. The Akron Beacon Journal counted 17 changes and said the new language puts the sanctity of human life, proportionate force, and de-escalation at the center. The same day, Mayor Shammas Malik released a Police Executive Research Forum review with 58 recommendations. City officials said 18 were already in place and pointed residents to a public dashboard. The recommendations cover a single use-of-force policy, clearer language on proportionality, training, medical response after a critical incident, and a real review process. PERF wrote that people outside the department were frustrated by the auditor’s lack of authority, and that the oversight board’s suggestions are non-binding recommendations the city and the department are not obligated to acknowledge. PERF also wrote that the volume of Finnell’s recommendations had begun to eclipse their practical value, and told him to separate the high-value items from the minor ones so the system would not become a repository for one-off complaints.

In September 2026 Finnell’s office opened a separate audit of the department’s network of nearly 150 Flock Safety cameras, a system Akron started using in 2022 under a contract that runs out the following September. On September 16 the oversight board voted to let him examine searches and queries from January 1, 2024, through August 31, 2026. Cameras are not the blood on the 2022 street. They are the newer version of the same question: who watches the department, and who can overrule it. A community-led charter amendment on the November 3, 2026 ballot would give the auditor subpoena power and require the chief to answer each recommendation in writing within 45 days, with silence counted as acceptance. Until voters decide that, the office can publish and it cannot make the chief act. Robinson shut down a website and drew six years and more than $668,000 in restitution. The eight officers who fired 94 rounds drew no criminal charges, a civil settlement the city paid, and an oversight office that can write reports the department is free to set aside. That is the imbalance this operation was built to point at. It is still the imbalance.

Related from The AEGIS Alliance: #OpDomesticTerrorism, Attempting to Clear up Misconceptions about Anonymous, and Police Accountability.