Missouri’s firebrand lieutenant governor has a message for Bill de Blasio: Stop listening to Rev. Al Sharpton.
“In my view, they should not be working with him,” Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder told The Post on Saturday as tensions simmered over Ferguson’s grand jury decision — and an equally volatile grand jury decision loomed in the police chokehold death of Eric Garner in Staten Island.
“He is an inciter of mobs and he demands mob justice,” Kinder said of Sharpton, who has been drumming up protests before TV cameras in Ferguson and New York.
Kinder spoke as Sharpton amped up the pressure on Staten Island grand jurors who have been hearing evidence since September in the Garner case.
Sharpton led a chant of “Countdown! Countdown!” at his weekly National Action Network press conference, where he stood at the microphone with the families of Garner and Akai Gurley, whom police shot dead in a dark stairwell a couple weeks back.
“Today, November 29, let the clock stop and the countdown [begin] on what will the grand jury say about justice,” Sharpton told a cheering crowd of nearly 100.
“It’s tragic,” Kinder said of Sharpton’s influence in the administrations of President Obama and Mayor de Blasio.
Kinder, one of the only Republicans holding statewide office in Missouri, has been outspoken in criticizing how Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon — possibly at the behest of the Justice Department — allowed the National Guard to stand by idly as stores and police cars burned on a Ferguson main street.
[Sharpton] is an inciter of mobs and he demands mob justice.
- Missouri Lt. Gov Peter Kinder
He has also called for the arrest of Michael Brown’s stepfather for inciting a riot Monday night by repeatedly demanding, “Burn this motherf–king bitch down!”
Should New York be faced with a no-indictment vote in the Garner case, the NYPD is “immensely capable,” Kinder said. “I hope they are not hamstrung from above or by a left-wing mayor.”
The NYPD is bracing for a decision as early as next week, law-enforcement sources said.
“If there’s any vandalism, there will be arrests,” a source said.
Preparations are under way, according to Staten Island City Councilwoman Debi Rose.
“We have been meeting . . . with community leaders, clergy, the Police Department, the police commissioner, and the Mayor’s Office so that we can be prepared,” she said.
Additional reporting by Amber Jamieson, Georgett Roberts and Andrea Hay