President Obama

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Last week, Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson released a video, apologizing to Brown’s parents for their son’s death, and for not moving the teenager’s body from the street for four hours.

Unartful, perhaps, yet it seemed sincere.

The response: The Ferguson mob cursed the chief and Brown’s father brushed him off saying, “an apology would be when Darren Wilson has handcuffs, [is] processed, and charged with murder.”

Understandably, this is what Michael Brown’s father wants. And this is what the protesters demand. But that is not the way the law works in America, where crowds get the indictments and convictions they demand under a threat of civil disobedience or violence.

Saturday night, a Ferguson cop was shot in an incident unrelated to August. But Chief Jackson and State Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson have told the Washington Post their officers have been repeatedly threatened and, since August, have come under gunfire.

If a St. Louis officer is wounded or killed in revenge for Brown, President Obama will deserve a full share of the moral responsibility.

It is time he started acting like a president of all the people, and dropped this role of outside agitator.