GRETNA, La. — The publisher of a satirical news article connected to the recent firings of two local police officers called the officers' terminations a "victory for the left."
Two Gretna Police Department officers were fired Monday after one of them suggested a U.S. Congresswoman should be shot in a Facebook post that gained national attention over the weekend.
Charles Rispoli, an officer in the department since 2005, shared a fake news story from a satirical website about U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last week.
Along with the story, he made the comment, “This vile idiot needs a round........and I don’t mean the kind she used to serve,” referencing a gunshot and the lawmaker’s earlier career as a bartender.
SEE: Two Gretna police officers fired after Facebook post suggests Rep. Ocasio-Cortez should be shot
Rispoli's coworker, Angelo Varisco, liked the post. Both were fired for violating the department's social media policy, Chief Arthur Lawson said.
The satirical story about Ocasio-Cortez was posted on TatersGonnaTate.com under the pseudonym "Fallis Gunnington."
Christopher Blair, who says he runs the Taters Gonna Tate website and others like it, calls himself a left-wing troll who posts obviously false and satirical stories about liberal politicians, hoping to flush out right-wing hatred.
He said the fact that Rispoli is being punished is a “victory for the left.”
"Not only do I consider it a victory, everyone who works with the page considers it a victory," Blair said. "It’s a liberal troll operation, so the whole point is to snag folks and make them look silly."
Blair says he has followers who “patrol” the posts to point out to Facebook when someone comments with hate speech. He says they report hundreds of people who then get temporarily banned from Facebook for comments made on the stories.
"We’ve gotten more and more ridiculous as time goes on. And the whole point to that is we want to make sure and see what people on the alt-Right will actually share, how far they’ll go," Blair said.
Blair said he thinks it wasn't the mere fact that Rispoli and Varisco interacted with his article that warranted their terminations.
"It wasn’t so much the share, it was the hate that went along with it. It was the post and the threats to her life. I mean, you’re a police officer!" Blair said.
Blair said the stories published on the website are "ridiculous," with the goal of shaming those who don't realize the information is false.
"They don’t respond to things like logic and reason, but they do respond to shame, so we give them a little bit of that," he said.
Asked if he was concerned that his officers fell for a trick that was intended to trip up people on the political right-wing, Chief Lawson said, "If that was the intent, it worked."
The Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate first made Lawson aware of Rispoli's Facebook comments on Friday. Lawson said he immediately opened an internal investigation. He said no criminal charges would be brought against either of the former officers.
WWL-TV left messages on cell phones listed for both Rispoli and Varisco but did not receive any response Monday. Lawson declined to release photos of either, saying both had received threats because of their Facebook posts. Both of their Facebook pages were taken down after the story went viral.