Sheriff: Detective admits threatening president, will retire

A Jacksonville police officer has quit after admitting he told colleagues that he would volunteer to assassinate President Barack Obama.

Sam Koivisto told the Florida Times-Union on Wednesday that his comments had been blown out of proportion and that he’d planned to retire in five months anyway.

The 57-year-old retired earlier this month while facing an internal investigation into his comments to other officers after the election. He told them that if an order came to kill Obama, he “wouldn’t mind being the guy.”

When questioned by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office integrity unit, he also said he also didn’t care if a nuclear explosion killed everyone in the Northeastern U.S because they supported Obama. Speaking about Hurricane Sandy, he said he wouldn’t mind if it had “killed them all” because of the region’s liberal leaning demographic.

“The statement I made in the office was something of the nature — I think Ms. Field at some point said, ‘You know, the poor people up north just got hit by one storm and now they’re hit by another,’” Koivisto said. “And I made the statement, ‘Well, you know, the whole Northeast just generally has voted Democratic, voted heavily Obama, got him elected. And so I said something to the point, ‘Well, if a nuclear bomb exploded and killed them all, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings any.’ That’s what I said. Didn’t make any statement about hurting anybody or anything of that nature.”

LISTEN: Audio interview with detective accused of threatening president
DOCUMENT: Sheriff Rutherford’s letter on Detective Koivisto
VIDEO: Local News Coverage

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