Police Officer Who Suggested Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Should Be Shot Fired From Police Department
A police officer in Louisiana, who suggested in a social media post that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be shot, and another officer who “liked” the post, have both been fired.
“This vile idiot needs a round… And I don’t mean the kind she used to serve,” Charlie Rispoli wrote in a since-deleted Facebook post referring to Ocasio-Cortez last Thursday, according to a screenshot shared by NOLA.com on Saturday. Before joining Congress earlier this year, the 29-year-old lawmaker worked in New York as a bartender.
At a press conference on Monday afternoon, the Gretna Police Department announced that Rispoli, who has served in the force since 2005, and another officer, Angelo Varisco, who “liked” Rispoli’s post, have been fired, according to NOLA.com.
“This incident, we feel, has been an embarrassment to our department,” Gretna police chief Arthur Lawson told reporters. “These officers have certainly acted in a manner which was unprofessional, alluding to a violent act be conducted against a sitting U.S. (congresswoman), a member of our government, we are not going to tolerate that.”
“We still have an open investigation at this time until we get that final information from Facebook,” he added, noting that any other officers who are found to have positively interacted with the post will also be terminated from the force.
Since the post has been deleted, the department is still waiting to hear back from Facebook as to whether any other officers have liked or commented on it.
Lawson confirmed that the department was alerted to the post on Friday. Rispoli was initially placed on administrative leave earlier today, before the department made the decision to terminate his job with the force.
The police chief assured reporters on Monday that Rispoli and Varisco, who was with the force for less than three years, were both on security detail in the Jefferson Parish Government Building. Neither worked on the streets as patrol officers, Lawson said.
Rispoli’s comments on Facebook was shared alongside a link to a false article about Ocasio-Cortez, attributing a quote that the congresswoman had never said. The story, written by satirical website Taters Gonna Tate, was titled, “Ocasio-Cortez On the Budget: ‘We Pay Soldiers Too Much.'”
The featured image on the story contained a watermark stating the content is satire. In addition, Snopes.com, a fact-checking website, also debunked the story as “false.” Despite this, it appears Rispoli was unaware that the story was untrue.
His comments came days after President Donald Trump repeatedly made racist remarks about Ocasio-Cortez and three of her fellow first-term progressive Democrats, congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. The president’s attacks first came in a series of tweets earlier this month, where he urged members of the so-called “Squad,” all first-term lawmakers and all women of color, to “go back and help fix the totally broke and crime infested places from which they came.
Despite the president’s suggestion that all four of the congresswomen were foreign-born, only one was born outside America. Congresswoman Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia and moved to the U.S. as a child after her family fled from their home nation.
Trump doubled down on his tweets on multiple occasions throughout last week, despite Democratic lawmakers and almost every 2020 presidential candidate quickly moving to call his remarks “racist.” The hashtags #RacistInChief and #TrumpIsARacist also trended on Twitter at various times last week.
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