Donald Trump’s law-and-order message and unequivocal support for police in other recent confrontations between cops and black men have made him popular with law enforcement. | AP Photo Police union knocks Trump for suggesting Tulsa officer choked

The top official in the country’s largest police union tweaked Donald Trump on Wednesday for leaping to blame the police officer who shot an unarmed black man in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Trump last week, and that endorsement still stands, said Jim Pasco, the group’s executive director. But of Trump, said Pasco, "he must be mindful of the due process rights and presumption of innocence accorded to all, including police officers.”


Trump has been reaching out to black voters in recent weeks, and on Wednesday, the Republican presidential nominee said he was “very, very troubled” by Tuesday’s shooting of Terence Crutcher by Officer Betty Shelby, and suggested her inexperience was to blame.

"Now, did she get scared? Was she choking? What happened? But maybe people like that, people that choke, people that do that, maybe they can't be doing what they're doing, okay? They can't be doing what they're doing,” Trump said at a church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

"I watched the shooting in particular in Tulsa. And that man was hands up,” Trump continued. “That man went to the car, hands up, put his hand on the car. I mean, to me, it looked like he did everything you're supposed to do, and he looked like a really good man."

The Fraternal Order of Police boasts 330,000 members, most of whom are rank-and-file cops, from all over the country. Last week, its national board voted to endorse Trump, based on members’ votes at the state chapter level.

Trump’s law-and-order message and unequivocal support for police in other recent confrontations between cops and black men have made him popular with law enforcement, so his criticism of Shelby was an unusual departure.

Clinton has sharply criticized the killings of both Crutcher and Keith Lamont Scott, whose death in Charlotte, N.C., prompted protests even as police said he was armed.

Clinton said that such killings should “become intolerable” and touted the need for reform on Wednesday, and the day before she spoke about “implicit bias” in the context of the Tulsa incident.

That prompted Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway to attack Clinton Wednesday morning, saying on Fox News, “It’s just unbelievable that she would do that before we even know the facts, the details. I think that’s an overpoliticization of a situation where we don’t know the facts.”

Conway’s remarks came before Trump’s own suggestion that the officer choked.