Presidential hopeful Donald Trump says initial evidence pointed to the police shooting of a black man in Milwaukee being justified as he visited the city.
The
Republican nominee has been vocal in his support of law enforcement
during a spate of protests across the country over high-profile police
shootings
Following his visit to the Wisconsin city, he told Fox
News: "It's law and order. We have to obey the laws or we don't have a
country.
"We have a case where good people are out there trying
to get people to sort of calm down and they're not calming down and we
have our police who are doing a phenomenal job."
Violent protests broke out in Milwaukee on Saturday night after the death earlier in the day of Sylville Smith, 23.
Authorities
said Smith was stopped for acting suspiciously and then fled, and was
shot by police because he was carrying an illegal handgun and refused
orders to drop it.
Trump added: "But the gun was pointed at his (a police officer's)
head supposedly ready to be fired. Who can have a problem with that?
That's what the narrative is.
"Maybe it's not true. If it is true, people shouldn't be rioting."
Around two dozen peaceful protesters greeted Trump on Tuesday evening
outside a Milwaukee theater where he taped a town hall session with Fox
News.
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump held a roundtable discussion with Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and Inspector Edward Bailey.
Clarke,
who is black and spoke last month at the Republican National
Convention, has been blunt in his assessment of the unrest, writing in
an opinion piece for The Hill that "it was a collapse of the social
order where tribal behavior leads to reacting to circumstances instead
of waiting for facts to emerge."