A police officer from Coral Springs is facing two weeks' suspension without pay after a citizen complained about two TikTok videos in which the officer appeared to be making offensive suggestions about Mexicans.
The incident began when several city officials were emailed regarding two public TikTok videos that Sergeant Gilbert Monzon of the Coral Springs Police Department had posted to his account.
In one of the videos, an artificial voice says "scanning for Mexicans," until the camera stops on a Coral Springs police officer and the voice says "We've got a Mexican."
The second video features a voice singing, “Donald Trump, send me home, back to where I belong, back to Mexico, to see my papa.”
The person who alerted city officials to the posts wrote in the email that he had been deeply offended by the videos.
An internal affairs investigation concluded that Monzon had "engaged in behavior that could be construed as mean spirited, abusive, and unprofessional."
Monzon, who is Cuban, said that the videos had been meant to be satirical and were "to connect with the newer guys at work in team building."
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He also said that although he had created the videos, he had not intentionally made them public, and said that his kids must have made them public while playing with his account the following day.
"Both videos disparage the plight of Mexicans in the United States," the internal affairs investigation concluded. "The audio tract in the first video mocks border agents scanning for Mexicans, and in the second video it's making light of the U.S. President sending Mexicans back to Mexico."
Monzon was one of the officers who was lauded for helping injured victims after the Parkland shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.
