Adding fuel to a banner week for threats made against women of color in Congress, a cop in Louisiana allegedly made a Facebook post last week suggesting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez deserves to be shot.
The Times-Picayune reports that on Thursday, Charlie Rispoli, a cop in Gretna, Lousiana, posted an article about AOC to his personal Facebook page, along with the caption: “This vile idiot needs a round…….and I don’t mean the kind she used to serve.” The caption is a nod to AOC’s old bartending gig, and an obvious reference to, you know, a round of ammo, which is just the kind of thing an officer of the law should say about a sitting member of Congress.
Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson said on Friday that he would investigate the now-deleted post. Per Talking Points Memo:
“I’m not going to take this lightly and this will be dealt with on our end,” Lawson said. “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.”
“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,” he continued.
Then again, it seems unlikely Rispoli will suffer any significant consequences for, you know, threatening violence against a House Representative. Per the Times-Picayune:
Disciplinary measures, if there are any, would not be made public, he said.
This is not the first time law enforcement officials have made threatening or inappropriate comments about AOC on social media; earlier this month, a ProPublica investigation found a secret Facebook group for Border Patrol agents full of lewd and sexist jokes and memes about AOC, including an illustration showing Trump trying to get AOC to give him a blowjob. And Rispoli’s post came just one day after Trump attacked AOC and fellow Congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley at a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, his words against Omar so vile he incited the crowd to chant, “Send her back!”
It’s also noteworthy that article Rispoli posted, headlined, “Ocasio-Cortez On the Budget: ‘We Pay Soldiers Too Much,’” is actually a fake news story from “satirical” website Taters Gonna Tate. Somehow, Rispoli missed the disclaimers, not that the truth matters much to him, I wager.