ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Hillary Clinton — and Democrats in general — are quick to call out law-enforcement after the shooting of African-Americans, but they are loathe to do the same when it comes to Islamic terrorism.

After the police shooting of an unarmed black man in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mrs. Clinton took to Steve Harvey’s radio show on Tuesday morning to call the act “intolerable.”

“This horrible shooting — again. How many times do we have to see this in our country?” Mrs. Clinton asked. “In Tulsa? An unarmed man? With his hands in the air? I mean, this is just unbearable, and it needs to be intolerable.”

She continued: “You know, maybe I can, by speaking directly to white people, say, ‘Look, this is not who we are.’ We’ve got to do everything possible to improve policing, to go right at implicit bias. There are good, honorable, cool-headed police officers. … We can do better. We have got to rein in what is absolutely inexplicable, and we’ve got to have law enforcement respect communities and communities respect law enforcement, because they have to work together.”

The Tulsa police department released a video on Monday of the encounter and opened a criminal investigation into the shooting. It also placed the cop — a woman — on paid administrative leave. The federal Justice Department opened a separate civil rights investigation.

Bottom line: The police department is taking the correct steps, and the entire incident is still under investigation, yet Mrs. Clinton was quick to call the police officer’s action one of “implicit bias” and “intolerable.”

She was not so quick to judge Ahmad Khan Rahami, who planted several al Qaeda-inspired bombs in New York City and New Jersey over the weekend.

“Obviously, we need to do everything we can to support our first responders, also to pray for the victims. We have to let this investigation unfold,” Mrs. Clinton said on Saturday in her plane. “We’ve been in touch with various officials, including the mayor’s office in New York, to learn what they are discovering as they conduct this investigation. And I’ll have more to say about it when we actually know the facts.”

On Monday, she made a fuller statement — still sympathetic to Mr. Rahami even though more links were being made about his radicalization and immigration status.

“Well, it is true that a suspect of interest has been identified, and we need to do everything we can to support law enforcement as they track him down to determine what role, if any, he played in these events,” Mrs. Clinton said after being asked about Mr. Rahami, a U.S. citizen whose father is an Afghan immigrant, and if Donald Trump may have a case about tougher immigration laws in respect to terror.

Then she added: “But let us remember, there are millions and millions of naturalized citizens in America from all over the world. There are millions of law-abiding peaceful Muslim-Americans. This is the kind of challenge that law enforcement can be and is prepared to address, namely going after anyone who would threaten the United States.”

So there you have it — in one case, police officers are “intolerable,” and we as a society should be quick to judge.

When it comes to Islamic terrorism, however, we should do our best to give the suspect due process.

And people wonder why Mr. Trump is making this presidential contest competitive.

Sign up for Daily Opinion Newsletter Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.