Trump tells officers to be rough on gangs

BRENTWOOD, N.Y. — President Donald Trump on Friday called for police and immigration officials to be “rough” with suspected gang members in order to rid the country of “animals” he said are terrorizing communities.

“Please don’t be too nice,” Trump told police recruits at Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood, a heavily Latino suburb of New York. “Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know the way you put their hand so they don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody … you can take that hand away.”

He implied he was satisfied with rough handling of suspects by the police.

“When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon — you just see them thrown in, rough,” he said.

He blamed the Obama administration for admitting criminals into the United States.

“The previous administration enacted an opendoor policy to illegal immigrants from Central America,” he said. “As a result MS-13 surged into the country and scoured, just absolutely destroyed, so much in front of it.”

He referred to Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a primarily Salvadoran gang that started in Los Angeles in the 1980s and has spread into other communities. The gang is blamed for 17 killings in Long Island since the beginning of last year.

In often graphic detail, Trump spoke of the gangs’ cruelty to victims, “they like to knife them and cut them and watch them die slowly.”

Trump’s speech in Long Island drew strong reactions.

“It’s clear that the way he views things is simple: If you’re a person of color, then police can beat you, slam you to ground, not have any respect for your rights as a human,” said Jeff Robinson, a deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union.

“It’s outrageous. … If you’re a person of color in this country, there’s every reason to fear for your life, when you hear these comments from a president,” Robinson said.

Hundreds of demonstrators protested outside the community college in Brentwood, a suburb of 60,000 people, two thirds of them Latino.