A woman who was trying to celebrate her 24th birthday at a Chicago park instead found herself being the target of a racist tirade from a man who got menacingly close, even as a nearby police officer failed to intervene.
Mia Irizarry was setting up her party when the man started harassing her for wearing a Puerto Rico flag shirt.
“You should not be wearing that in the United States of America,” the man says at one point in the 35-minute video, which was recorded in mid-June and posted to Facebook using its live video function. “Are you a citizen? Are you a United States citizen?”
Puerto Rico, of course, is a commonwealth territory of the United States, and all its residents are US citizens.
In the video, Irizarry can be heard asking the man to leave her alone, and when he persists, she begs the Cook County Forest Preserves officer to help.
“Can you please get away from me?” Irizarry tells the man. “Officer, I feel highly uncomfortable, can you please grab him?”
The officer, however, just stands there and observes the confrontation.
On Monday, the official Twitter account for Forest Preserves of Cook County said officials were “aware of the incident” and had launched an investigation “into the response of our officer,” who has been reassigned to desk duty.
