A Houston police officer at the center of a viral video featuring racist remarks has been fired, with the department’s chief condemning her conduct as “abhorrent” and “entirely unacceptable.”
The new development came on Friday when the Houston Police Department announced that Officer Ashley Gonzalez was “no longer an employee of the department” following an internal investigation into the widely circulated clip, according to a report in TMZ.
“The behavior exhibited by Ashley Gonzalez was abhorrent, disgusting, and entirely unacceptable,” Police Chief J. Noe Diaz Jr. said in a statement. “It is deeply disturbing and has no place in law enforcement or in our community.”
The department said Gonzalez was immediately relieved of duty once officials became aware of the video earlier this week and moved “as fast as legally possible” under state civil service laws to complete the investigation.
The footage reportedly showed Gonzalez recounting an alleged attempted theft while repeatedly using a racial slur and making other inflammatory comments about race and discrimination. At one point, she said, "Y’all don’t know how good it felt to say [expletive] out loud. Oh my God, I felt like I was back in the Marine Corps," said Gonzalez, who served in the Marines from 2019 to 2023, according to media reports.
The incident quickly drew backlash online and from law enforcement groups, including the Houston Police Officers’ Union, which previously described the video as “extremely disturbing.”
