A veteran Louisiana police officer suggests that outspoken congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has been the target of racial abuse by President Donald Trump too, has to be shot.
The officer, Charlie Rispoli, who has been enlisted by the police department in Gretna, Louisiana for 14 years, had referred to the Democratic representative from of New York in a Facebook post on Thursday as “this vile idiot.” She “needs a round — and I don’t mean the kind she used to serve” — a reference to her past work as a bartender, the officer’s post continued. He then commented on his own post, noting, “It must be hard living with the IQ of a Chiclet.”
Gretna’s various officials expressed repulsion at the comments on Sunday amid the likelihood that Rispoli’s remarks could invoke criminal investigation or disciplinary action, The New York Times reported.
Wayne Rau, a city councilman and the mayor pro tem of Gretna, said, “I’m pretty appalled by it,” “I don’t think this is a representation of the police department of the city of Gretna,” Rau added.
Asked whether Rispoli’s post was a threat, he said, “I’m not sure how to take that post.”
Arthur Lawson, the city’s police chief, said, “I will tell you this: This will not go unchecked.” “I’m not going to take this lightly and this will be dealt with on our end. It’s not something we want someone that’s affiliated with our department to make these types of statements. That’s not going to happen,” Lawson noted.
Earlier in the month, Trump told Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib from Michigan — both Muslims — and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts in a tweet to ”go back where they came from.” Omar was born in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu and immigrated to the US as a refugee, while the three other liberal Democrats were all born in the US.
The president criticized the congresswomen for “telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run.”
The quartet regularly take the chance to protest his populist and simplistic approaches to domestic and foreign policy.
“You are stoking white nationalism bc you are angry that people like us are serving in Congress and fighting against your hate-filled agenda,” Omar has said in reaction to Trump’s tweet. Tlaib has, meanwhile, called for Trump’s impeachment.