Attorney general Eric Holder and Missouri Democratic leaders need to apologize to the law-enforcement community for impugning officers’ motives in light of the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., according to one prominent county sheriff.

Milwaukee County sheriff David Clarke, who gained notoriety last year for encouraging gun ownership within his Wisconsin community, said Holder, Governor Jay Nixon, and Senator Claire McCaskill made the situation in Ferguson worse with their “irresponsible, inflammatory” comments about the city’s police force and its supposed problem with race relations. Clarke argued on Fox News on Friday that the trio was “insinuating that our law-enforcement officers across the United States engage in some nefarious or systematic and cultural attempts to violate people’s civil rights.”



“I thought that was a slap in the face to every law-enforcement officer in America who puts on the badge and the uniform everyday to go out and risk their lives in service to their community,” he said.

Clarke specifically called on Holder to either further explain himself or apologize to law enforcement for “adding hot sauce to this volatile situation.”

“He doesn’t owe me an apology, but the men and women I know of do not have that kind of maliciousness in their hearts and I thought that that was a poor display in terms of leadership,” Clarke said.