- Two police officers in Louisiana have been fired over a Facebook post that suggested Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be shot.
- Officer Charles Rispoli, who was with the Gretna Police Department for 14 years, called the congresswoman a “vile idiot” as he shared a satirical article that incorrectly said she thought soldiers were paid too much.
- She said that she “needs a round – and I don’t mean the kind she used to serve,” seeming to reference Ocasio Cortez’s time as a bartender, in the post that was liked by Officer Angelo Varisco.
- Ocasio-Cortez linked the post to US President Donald Trump’s racist comments against her and other congresswomen, saying that the president is “sowing violence” and “creating an environment where people can get hurt.”
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Two Louisiana police officers have been fired over a Facebook post suggesting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be shot.
Officer Charles Rispoli wrote last week that in a now-deleted post that Ocasio-Cortez is a “vile idiot” and said that she “needs a round – and I don’t mean the kind she used to serve.”
Rispoli, who worked for Gretna Police Department, near New Orleans, was making an apparent reference to Ocasio-Cortez’s work in a bar before she was elected as a Congresswomen for New York in 2018. He had worked for Gretna PD for 14 years.
Another officer, Angelo Varisco liked the post, which Rispoli wrote as he shared an article with the headline “Ocasio-Cortez on the Budget: ‘We Pay Soldiers Too Much'” from a satirical website.
Snopes noted that Ocasio-Cortez has "never said this."
Arthur Lawson, chief of the Gretna police force, told reporters on Monday that both men had been fired and that the Facebook post promoted violence.
He said that it "violated our policy, it was in a nature that certainly was not supported by our agency and, promoted violence."
He said that the incident has been "an embarrassment to the department."
"These officers have certainly acted in a manner which was unprofessional, alluding to a violent act to be conducted against a sitting US congressman, a member of our government. We're not going to tolerate that."
Lawson said that he did not know if Rispoli understood that he was sharing to a satirical article.
"I think he just got caught up in the heat of the moment. And this wasn't even a real news article."
Lawson told NOLA.com on Saturday that he believed that the comment did not constitute a threat, but that he believed it violated the force's policies.
Ocasio-Cortez connected the post to US President Donald Trump's racist comments about her and three other freshman congresswomen, all US citizens, who he said should "go back" to their "broken and crime-infested countries" if they are unhappy with the US.
Ocasio-Cortez said on Sunday that comments like Rispoli's are: "Trump's goal when he uses targeted language & threatens elected officials who don't agree w/ his political agenda. It's authoritarian behavior."
"The President is sowing violence. He's creating an environment where people can get hurt & he claims plausible deniability," she wrote.
