How da hell does this happen! Just hours after some local churchgoers traded their Easter bonnets for hoodies in a show of support for Trayvon Martin and his family, someone else just a few miles away was using Trayvon’s name to spread intolerance and ignorance. Around one o’clock Monday morning, calls started pouring into Michigan State Police dispatch. Someone had broken into an electronic road construction sign along I-94 westbound at Michigan Avenue and changed the message to “Trayvon a [N-word].” MDOT spokesperson Rob Morosi was sickened by the display of hatred. “It’s such a shame that in this day and age we’re still dealing with this and that they would use a mechanism to reach so many people,” he told us. Morosi said someone busted the lock on the sign and used the keyboard inside to change the wording. He added there is no way it was an inside job. “There’s no one that works at the department that did that. Actually, these signs are provided by a subcontractor on the job. They’re not actually the State of Michigan’s signs. But we’re not going to point the finger at the subcontractor in this situation. Obviously someone either pulled over to the side of the road or came down the freeway slope, broke into the panel, took the keyboard, but before they did that, they changed the message,” Morosi said. Michigan State Police are actively looking for the person responsible. If you were traveling in the area and saw anything suspicious, please give them a call. The Michigan Department of Transportation released the following statement Monday afternoon: “The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) today confirmed that a portable message sign board along I-94 in Detroit was hacked into during the early morning hours of Monday, April 9. The portable message board, owned and operated by a subcontractor, was in place advising motorists of the active I-94/M-39 interchange project. Originally displaying a ‘road work ahead’ message, a hacker broke into the control panel and changed the advanced construction notice to a racial epithet. The portable message board was hacked into shortly after midnight (EST) but crews responded and had the message dismantled by 1 a.m. ‘Everyone at MDOT is appalled by this criminal act,’ said State Transportation Director Kirk T. Steudle. ‘We will do everything we can to cooperate with the Michigan State Police investigation and we look forward to bringing the responsible party to justice.’ Mich. Construction Sign Displayed Racial Slur Directed at Trayvon Martin: MyFoxDETROIT.com What do you think about this mess?
Wow!
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