La. police officer on Facebook calls for AOC to be shot

A Louisiana police officer is facing criticism over a comment he made last week suggesting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., be shot.

The officer, Charlie Rispoli, a 14-year veteran of the Gretna, Louisiana police force, called Ocasio-Cortez a "vile idiot" who "needs a round, and I don't mean the kind she used to serve," alluding to her past job as a bartender, according to a screenshot posted by nola.com. According to the New Orleans-based news outlet, his comment was a reaction to a fake quote attributed to the congresswoman claiming that "we pay soldiers too much." Both his post and Facebook account have since been taken down.

Gretna's police chief, Arthur Lawson, told nola.com he found the post "disturbing," adding, "This will not go unchecked."

"I'm not going to take this lightly and this will be dealt with on our end," he told the outlet. "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."

He said that while he did not think the post constituted an actual threat, it was likely a violation of his department's social media policy.

A spokesman for Ocasio-Cortez declined a request to comment from NBC News.

The controversy comes amid a week of backlash over comments President Donald Trump made last weekend that Ocasio-Cortez and three other freshmen congresswomen of color should "go back" to where they "originally came from" rather than criticize his administration. All four lawmakers are U.S. citizens and three of them, including Ocasio-Cortez, were born in the U.S.

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Ocasio-Cortez was also the subject of violent and misogynistic Facebook posts in a private group where nearly 10,000 current and former Customs and Border Protection agents exchanged thoughts, a ProPublica investigation revealed.

And the four congresswomen targeted in Trump's tweets, Ocasio-Cortez, Reps. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., were the subject of a recent Facebook post by the Republican County Chairmen's Association of Illinois, which labeled them the "jihad squad."

"Political Jihad is their game," the since-deleted post read. "If you don't agree with their socialist ideology you're racist."

The state's GOP chairman, Tim Schneider, disavowed the post Sunday night.

"Bigoted rhetoric greatly distracts from legitimate and important policy debates and further divides our nation," Mr. Schneider said, adding, "I urge everyone who opposes them to keep the rhetoric focused on policy and ideology."