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Mia Irizarry planned to spend her birthday last month celebrating with friends at Caldwell Woods, a vast wooded area of the Far Northwest Side of Chicago. She bought a permit to rent a picnic area in the park and arrived wearing a shirt with the Puerto Rican flag.
It is this Puerto Rican shirt which, according to her, has incited a man to harass her repeatedly. to stand up and harass "you should not bring that to the United States of America." (Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States of America and its residents are US citizens.)
During all the while, a policeman He was watching, ignoring Irizarry as she pleaded with him to intervene. Irizarry recorded the exchange in a live Facebook video that has since been viewed over 1.4 million times and has aroused outrage from local leaders, congressmen and the Puerto Rican governor himself .
The governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rosselló tweets Monday evening calling the video "an outrageous event in which a Puerto Rican woman was brutally harassed by a bigot while an officer did not." I am dismayed, shocked and disturbed by the behavior of the agent. "
The governor demanded that the officer be expelled from the police force. Rosselló tweeted on Tuesday: "The Forest Preserve District Police Department announced Tuesday that it had placed the police officer on duty last month pending an internal investigation into the situation. his conduct. The officer was identified as Patrick Connor, a 10-year-old veteran who had already been sanctioned for part-time work and did not have the required qualifications, said Forest District Police Chief Preserve, Kelvin Pope. 19659007] "The officer should have intervened and he should have done something," said Pope. Eileen Figel, deputy executive director of the agency, described the video as "disturbing" and said that the agency had apologized to Irizarry and had repaid him the money that she had spent on renting the picnic area
Figel said. "The aggressive behavior and racist and ignorant comments of the individual are appalling to us all."
In the video captured by Irizarry, she is heard explaining to the man in a state of intoxication that Puerto Rico is "a part of the United States." The man, later identified by police like Timothy G. Trybus, 62, continued to insult her, asking if she was "uneducated."
"You're not going to change you know it," Trybus is heard telling him, adding that "the world is not going to change the United States of America, period."
"I do not try to change anyone, I just try to come here for an anniversary," Irizarry answers. He asks her if she is an American citizen, to which she responds that she is. "If you're an American citizen, you should not wear this shirt in America," says Trybus.
We hear Irizarry ask the man to get away from her and beg the nearby officer, Connor, to help her. "Officer, I feel very badly at ease Can you catch him please?"
"Officer, I paid for a permit for this area "she said too. "I do not feel comfortable with him here Is there anything you can do?"
Another man, whom Irizarry later identified as being his brother , intends to defend her, approaching Trybus and telling her: "Back, do not follow her."
A few minutes later, other officers arrived to stop Trybus. The Forest County Preserve District of Cook County Police has accused Trybus of aggression and disorderly conduct, a policewoman told Irizarry on Tuesday that told a policewoman what had happened.
Later, Connor is seen writing in a notebook while Irizarry reports his complaint against Trybus.
"He's approached me many times," Irizarry tells Connor. "He kept following me and I even asked you to intervene because I felt uncomfortable."
Connor explains to Irizarry that he had been called to the scene for an unrelated incident between a different couple. "Now that I see what's going on, at no time is he going to attack, he's just a big mouth," Connor said.
"Well, I guess you never know," Irizarry answers.
At Tuesday's press conference, law enforcement officials said the other police officers arrived after Connor asked for help on his radio
Luis Arroyo, Jr., a county of Cook. The Commissioner of the Commission said that he had the impression that the officer "had not done his duty".
"And I will not accept anything other than the dismissal of this officer," Arroyo said. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), Also decried the incident on Twitter saying that it reflects a "culture of bigotry and hatred that has been tolerated to states United States, which now feels unleashed to express itself in the "
" In this case, an American citizen questions the citizenship of another US citizen and the application of the law in the United States sits down and observes, "he said. "Whether it's racists in a park, Cook County employees doing nothing, or presidents throwing paper towels at people and denigrating Latinos with every tweet, that's not the case." America that we want to become and hate at home. "
He was referring, of course, to President Trump's October visit to Puerto Rico, where he had thrown towel rolls into the crowd like basketballs.
Gutiérrez far from writing a letter to the Acting Deputy Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division at the Ministry of Justice to request an investigation into what happened to Irizarry.
"I understand this incident at the level of the same intestine happened when I was a freshman in Congress, "wrote Gutiérrez in the letter." The US Capitol Police mate me refused entry into the Capitol Complex despite being a congressman with identification, because my daughter wore a Puerto Rican flag and the officer doubted I could be a member of Congress. "[19659025] Erin Burnett Tuesday, the governor of Puerto Rico said that & # 39; he was "appalled and disgusted" by the video. "It's a matter of education, it's a civil rights issue and it's a matter of basic human dignity."
"Puerto Ricans are part of the United States," Rosello reminded viewers. "We have wars with other American compatriots, we are proud of American citizens, and people need to understand that."
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