Louisiana Cop Calls For Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez To Be Shot [Update: He’s Been Fired]

A Louisiana police offi­cer — who when he isn’t man­ning the streets — appar­ent­ly has time to post threat­en­ing mes­sages about elect­ed offi­cials on social media.
Officer Charlie Rispoli took time out of his day to write a Facebook post sug­gest­ing that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be shot; he also not­ed that the Democratic con­gress­woman from New York is a “vile idiot.”
“This vile idiot needs a round,” Rispoli wrote on social media and prob­a­bly fig­ured no one would read it because it was only on social media. In case any­one was won­der­ing what Rispoli meant by “a round,” the offi­cer kind­ly cleared that up as well, post­ing: “And I don’t mean the kind she used to serve,” NOLA​.com reports, in ref­er­ence to Ocasio-Cortez’s time as a bartender.

Rispoli has been a mem­ber of the Gretna, La., police force since 2005.“The department’s Police Chief Arthur Lawson told the local news site that the post was ‘dis­turb­ing’ and appeared to vio­late the department’s social media pol­i­cy,” Newsweek reports.
Lawson also not­ed that he didn’t think the post was an actu­al threat against the con­gress­woman, but he didn’t explain how it wasn’t, and he report­ed­ly claimed that he would deal with the sit­u­a­tion.
“Whether you agree or dis­agree with the mes­sage of these elect­ed offi­cials and how frus­trat­ed you may or may not get, this cer­tain­ly is not the type of thing that a pub­lic ser­vant should be post­ing,” Lawson said.

Newsweek notes that Rispoli’s sug­ges­tion that Ocasio-Cortez needs a round that wasn’t served in a bar — which, for those in the slow lane, means for her to be shot and the police chief doesn’t believe is an actu­al threat — was all linked to a fake news sto­ry from a web­site called Taters Gonna Tate titled: “Ocasio-Cortez On the Budget: ‘We Pay Soldiers Too Much.’”The sto­ry was clear­ly fake and Newsweek reports that the arti­cle had a “water­mark clear­ly stat­ing the con­tent is satire. Snopes​.com has also debunked the sto­ry, as ‘false.’” Of course they did, because Taters Gonna Tate is no Wall Street Journal. Rispoli report­ed­ly removed the post and took his entire Facebook page down after real­iz­ing that he’d not only made a huge ass of him­self but he’d threat­ened a con­gress­woman (well, his chief doesn’t believe he did, but I don’t know when or where offer­ing some­one a non-alco­hol-relat­ed “round” is a joke.)

From Newsweek:

Ocasio-Cortez and oth­er fresh­men pro­gres­sive Congresswomen, such as Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts have faced sig­nif­i­cant crit­i­cism and even death threats since tak­ing office ear­li­er this year. Last week, President Donald Trump repeat­ed­ly made racist remarks about the four con­gress­women, first writ­ing on Twitter that they should “go back” to the coun­tries “from which they came.” He added: “you can’t leave soon enough.”The pres­i­dent dou­bled down on the remarks even after Democrats and some Republicans slammed the attack as “racist” and “xeno­pho­bic.” All of the con­gress­women are women of col­or and three of the four were born in the U.S. as American cit­i­zens. Omar was born in Somalia and immi­grat­ed to the U.S. as a young girl. She became a nat­u­ral­ized U.S. cit­i­zen near­ly two decades ago in 2000. Many point­ed out that there is a long racist his­to­ry in the U.S. of peo­ple telling non-white Americans that they should return to their coun­tries of ori­gin, even if their fam­i­lies have been U.S. cit­i­zens for many generations.An inves­tiga­tive report by BuzzFeed pub­lished last month also found that many police offi­cers across the coun­try had post­ed to social media to endorse or encour­age vio­lence against women, crim­i­nal defend­ents and Muslims. The arti­cle by BuzzFeed report­ed on The Plain View Project, which was launched by Emily Baker-White and looked at the social media accounts of 2,900 cur­rent police offi­cers and 600 retired offi­cers rep­re­sent­ing eight depart­ments nationwide.

Update, 7/​22/​19, 6:23 p.m.: Rispoli has been fired by the Gretna Police Department, NOLA​.com reports. Another offi­cer who liked the Facebook post in which Rispoli sug­gest­ed that AOC need­ed “a round” was also fired. Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson announced the fir­ings at a press con­fer­ence ear­li­er today.

“This inci­dent, we feel, has been an embar­rass­ment to our depart­ment,” Lawson said, accord­ing to NOLA​.com. “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 (and) we are not going to tol­er­ate that.”
Story first appeared here: https://​www​.the​root​.com/​t​r​u​m​p​s​-​d​o​i​n​g​-​i​t​-​a​g​a​i​n​-​a​n​d​-​b​y​-​i​t​-​i​-​m​e​a​n​-​a​t​t​a​c​k​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​s​-​1​8​3​6​6​0​2​375