Trump Tells Cops: “Don’t be Too Nice” While Arresting “Thugs” (Video)

Earlier today, President Trump gave a speech in Long Island, New York, about cracking down on gang activity.

During the speech, he gave cops some…advice, of sorts:

“When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddywagon, you just see them thrown in, rough, I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice,” Trump told an audience of law enforcement officers and crime victims’ families.

“Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over?” the president continued. “Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody. Don’t hit their head? I said, ‘You can take the hand away, OK?’”

The president’s speech was intended to lay out his administration’s plan to defeat the criminal gang Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, reports The Hill:

He was speaking at Suffolk County Community College in the town of Brentwood, near where the gang has pulled off a string of violent attacks, including an April massacre that left four people dead.

“It is the policy of this administration to dismantle, decimate and eradicate MS-13,” he said.

The gang has taken root in several major U.S. metropolitan areas in the past few decades.

Listen:

Does Trump know about the Freddie Gray case? If not, here is a reminder from CBS:

Trump’s comments about police treatment of people in their custody resurrected memories of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Baltimore man who was shackled but alive when he was put in a Baltimore police van in April 2015. Gray left the vehicle with severe neck injuries, and his subsequent death spawned rioting.

To be clear: the president of the United States encouraged – during a nationally televised speech – police brutality.

Someone should remind him that it is illegal for law enforcement to beat or otherwise use excessive force on suspects, in part because here in America, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. And even after a person is found guilty, police are not allowed to rough them up. This is one of the things that supposedly makes the US “better” than many other countries. Yes, this applies to suspected gang members, too. We have a legal process we are supposed to consistently follow here in the US.

Meanwhile, several major cities are struggling to deal with well-publicized police brutality cases, and the increasing need for the use of dashcam and body cameras in police departments across the country has been in the news.

But should anyone be surprised that the Trump administration is expanding the police state and eroding civil liberties? His selection of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General should have been the first major sign.

More civil asset forfeiture and equitable sharing, more mandatory minimum sentences for minor “crimes,” more federal crackdowns on cannabis use (even for medical use, and in states that have legalized it), more use of private for-profit prisons, and now, more police use of excessive force.

What happened to the land of the free?

As John W. Whitehead recently wrote,

Memo to the rest of my fellow indentured servants who are living through this dark era of government corruption, incompetence and general ineptitude: this is not how justice in America is supposed to work.

We are now ruled by a government so consumed with squeezing every last penny out of the population that they are completely unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process.

Our freedoms aren’t just being trampled, however. They’re being eviscerated.