Two Louisiana police officers were fired over a Facebook post which quipped that U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez needed “a round,” language suggesting that the congresswoman should be shot.
According to CNN, Officer Charles Rispoli, who wrote the post last week, calling Ocasio Cortez a “vile idiot” who “needs a round … and I don’t mean the kind she used to serve,” as well as Officer Angelo Varisco, who liked the post, have both been terminated.
“This incident, we feel, has been an embarrassment to our department,” Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson told reporters on Monday while announcing the termination of the two officers.
Lawson said that Rispoli’s post “violated our policy, was in a nature that certainly was not supported by our agency and, promoted violence.”
Rispoli made the post in response to a fake news article in which Ocasio-Cortez was claimed to have said that, “We pay soldiers too much.”
It is not clear whether he knew that it was a fake post.
“I spoke to him personally just to try to find out why. I just couldn’t understand and I think he just got caught up in the heat of the moment,” the police chief said. “I mean this wasn’t even a real news article.”
Ocasio-Cortez herself responded to the news, pointing to the post as an example of President Donald Trump’s language “sowing violence.”
“This is Trump’s goal when he uses targeted language & threatens elected officials who don’t agree w/ his political agenda,” she tweeted. “It’s authoritarian behavior. The President is sowing violence. He’s creating an environment where people can get hurt & he claims plausible deniability.”
Ocasio-Cortez, one of the four members of Congress known as “The Squad” has been the target of consistent racist attacks launched by the president in the past few weeks.
The president’s comments also drew racist attention toward Rep. Ilhan Omar, another member of the “Squad” with Trump supporters shouting “send her back” in reference to the naturalized congresswoman during a recent Trump campaign rally in North Carolina.