(RNN) – Mia Irizarry was supposed to be celebrating her 24th birthday at an Illinois park last month, but a drunk man turned it into an unsettling scene over her Puerto Rico flag shirt.
Now the park is investigating why a park police officer on scene did little to deter the man, and has placed him on desk duty.
Irizarry originally posted a video of the harassment to Facebook, which has since been taken down. It nonetheless spread around social media, being viewed almost 2.5 million times just through a version produced by social news outlet NowThis.
In the video, an intoxicated white man berates her and repeatedly tells her she shouldn’t be wearing her shirt while questioning her citizenship.
A man harassed a woman wearing a Puerto Rico shirt because she 'should not be wearing that in the United States of America' (Puerto Rico is part of the United States of America) pic.twitter.com/4A4DMqeUZq
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) July 9, 2018
While not a state, Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the U.S., and Puerto Ricans are American citizens.
The video begins with the man confronting Irizarry.
“This is America,” he says. “You’re not going to change us, you know that? The world is not going to change the United States of America. Period. You should not be wearing that in the United States of America.”
He then asks her twice if she is a citizen, which she says she is.
As he gets more belligerent and comes toward her, Irizarry tries to get a nearby officer with the Cook County Forest Preserves force to help her.
She explains that she has rented the picnic area and has a permit to use the space.
“Officer, I feel highly uncomfortable. Can you please grab him? Please, officer,” she says.
The man continues ranting, while the officer doesn’t acknowledge Irizarry’s plea.
When the man again tries to get in her face, her brother arrives and intervenes. When the brother gets in the man’s way and stops him from coming back toward Irizarry, the officer then appears to get involved and warns the brother.
“How come you’re saying something when he’s going up, but when he was coming up to me you didn’t do anything?” Irizarry asks.
Apparently, another bystander eventually called police and more officers arrived to deal with the man.
The Forest Preserves wrote on Twitter on Monday that the investigation of the officer is “ongoing” and that he’d been assigned to desk duty “pending the outcome.”
“All people are welcome in the Forest Preserves of Cook County and no one should feel unsafe while visiting our preserves,” the park service wrote.
Ricardo Rossello, the governor of Puerto Rico, said on Twitter that he was “appalled” by seeing the Irizarry “brutally harassed by a bigot while an officer did not intervene.”
“We will be looking into this incident as our offices in DC are in contact with local and state authorities, demanding that this officer be expelled from the police force,” Rossello said.
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