MIAMI — A retired Miami-Dade police homicide stenographer wearing her department jacket went viral Tuesday night when video emerged of her screaming profanities at a parked SUV outside a Boca Raton Chinese restaurant.
"Just because you're Jewish and a Democrat doesn't give you the right to stay there," Leslie Socolov yells at the SUV blocking her car in a parking lot, as laughter erupts in the background. She also yells: "Move your f---ing car you stupid Jew!"
The video was posted to Twitter by a website called StopAntiSemitism.org. The Miami-Dade Police Department, in a tweet on Tuesday night, denounced the former employee, who served almost 20 years recording the statements of witnesses and murder suspects.
In the video, she is wearing a black Miami-Dade Police homicide jacket.
"The hateful speech is appalling and does not represent the values of the MDPD," the department said, adding that its Homeland Security bureau was investigating the incident.
The incident happened on Saturday night in the 9100 block of Glades Road. Socolov, 64, was arrested on a charge of DUI and disorderly intoxication by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.
"Oh f---," Socolov said when told Tuesday night by a reporter about the video going viral.
Socolov, reached by cellphone, insisted she was not anti-Semitic — because she is Jewish herself. She insisted she said "you," not "Jew," and that she wore the police jacket because it was the only one she had in her car.
"I'm not anti-Semitic. I'm getting persecuted," Socolov said in a profanity-laced interview. "Look at these Democrats getting away with bulls—t."
Socolov, who retired last year, said she'd gone to the Chinese restaurant to get hot-and-sour soup and noodles. She said the white SUV blocked her into her handicapped space. On Tuesday night, she continued to rail against the people in the SUV.
"They made their own f---ing parking space! They wouldn't move because they're holier than thou," she told the Miami Herald. "Oh well, f--- them. Democrats."
Socolov identified herself as a Republican.
This isn't the first time Socolov has made the news.
In 2015, she was driving and hit and killed a homeless man named Richard James Flaherty, a 70-year-old military veteran and war hero. She kept driving, but turned herself in to Aventura police the next day after she said she Googled the accident and discovered what she'd done.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office declined to charge Socolov. Flaherty's life was made into a documentary, "Giant Killer," by retired Aventura Police Officer David Yuzuk.
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