President Obama has no business criticizing the police in a riot-torn St. Louis suburb from his posh vacation retreat — more than 1,200 miles away, a top law-enforcement union official said Thursday.
“To police officers, the incongruity of his evaluating police tactics from the comfort of Martha’s Vineyard in the horrible tragedy which occurred in Missouri and ensuing the events is unfortunate,” Jim Pasco, executive director of the national Fraternal Order of Police, told The Post.
Obama on Thursday appealed for calm and took a shot at the police a day after he was dancing and smiling during a birthday party for the wife of a longtime friend.
“There is also no excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protests or to throw protesters in jail for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights,” Obama said of the mayhem since the police shooting death of Michael Brown, 18, in Ferguson, Mo.
The cop who shot the teen is a member of Pasco’s group and is being represented by one of its lawyers, he said.
In other developments:
■ Authorities warned that outside agitators were inciting violence. “After dark you have peaceful protesters that are mixed up with those that aren’t peaceful. It’s a question of elements from outside Ferguson coming into this. They’re coming here to cause trouble,“ Missouri House Majority Leader John Diehl told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
■ Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon did not order a curfew but put the Missouri State Highway Patrol in charge in Ferguson, with Capt. Ron Johnson, who is black, running the operation. “Ferguson will not be defined as a community that was torn apart by violence but will be known as a community that pulled together to overcome it,” Nixon said.
■ St. Louis County police defended the use of tear gas Wednesday night to repel the bottle- and firebomb-throwing demonstrators. “In talking to these guys, it is scary,” a police spokesman said. “They hear gunshots going off, and they don’t know where they’re coming from.”