Under the shadow of the Trump administration, the United States is continuing to experience violent division. Now, two police officers in Gretna, Louisiana, have been fired after one of them posted a Facebook message belligerently asserting that progressive New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be shot. Officer Charlie Rispoli shared the original post, and colleague Angelo Varisco liked the post, reacting to a completely fabricated fake news article asserting that the progressive leader said soldiers were being paid too much.
Rispoli had asserted in his caption, alluding to Ocasio-Cortez’s past as a bartender:
‘This vile idiot needs a round… and I don’t mean the kind she used to serve.’
On Friday, Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson had asserted:
‘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.’
Rispoli had apparently been on the force since 2005, shadowing his police work with who knows how much racism. The two officers’ firing comes within just a few days of the post originally surfacing, and as tumult continues to rage across the U.S. political scene over law enforcement acting in a similar manner. In Philadelphia alone, a whopping 72 cops were taken off the street following an investigation into hateful and violent social media postings from police officers. 72! A full 13 of them have already been announced as getting fired. Lawson apparently “had copies of news reports about the 72 officers taken off the streets in Philadelphia distributed to his officers,” although that definitely didn’t stop Rispoli.
Ocasio-Cortez has also personally faced this kind of harassment before. She was a main target of violent chatter in a secret Facebook group that ProPublica uncovered that marketed itself as for current and former border patrol officers and sported a full 10,000 or so members at the time of its reveal — including current border patrol chief Carla Provost! When Ocasio-Cortez recently personally pressed Department of Homeland Security chief Kevin McAleenan over the officers’ behavior, he shared that some had been placed on administrative leave, but beyond that he had no further information, including what posts might have led to what personnel reshuffling. There was no definitive conclusion that none of those responsible for the scrutinized violent imagery were not still also responsible for the care — or lack thereof — of detained immigrants.
Ocasio-Cortez and some of her colleagues like Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar have also been singled out for violent criticism from President Donald Trump himself. Trump demanded that they and others “go back where they came from” rather than criticize his administration, and at a soon following Trump rally, the president’s supporters took that a step further with violent chants of “Send her back!” targeting Omar.
As Ocasio-Cortez and others have noted in response to the waves of harassment, they’ve faced this in response to the “radical” positions of defending items like access to health care, the human rights of immigrants, and the actual representation of the actual American people in the U.S. federal government.
Featured Image via screenshot
