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Petition Calls For Firing Springfield Cop Over Charlottesville Comments

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    Calls are mounting for the firing of a police officer in Springfield, Massachusetts who made light of the violence in Charlottesville.

      Hundreds of people from around the country have posted critical comments to the Springfield Police Department’s Facebook page, and an online petition has been created calling for the dismissal of patrolman Conrad Lariviere. 

      On his own Facebook page Sunday, Lariviere mocked the anti-racism protestors who had been run down by a car.

      His comments have been widely condemned by local officials including Mayor Domenic Sarno.

      " I am very upset about this incident and we will pursue it to the letter of the law," vowed Sarno.

      Lariviere, who has been on the force since 2014, has been removed from street patrols pending the outcome of the internal investigation.         

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.