Cops are under siege across the country by criminals with bricks, rocks, guns, and more. It cannot continue, but Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and Attorney Gen. Phil Weiser might try to tie the hands of President Donald Trump.

Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers on Wednesday announced a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew, as criminals have thrown objects at local police, shattered windows, damaged patrol cars, and tagged the city with graffiti. Suthers compliments most protesters, whom he says peacefully express their anger and grief over the death of George Floyd – a black man choked by the knee of a white Minneapolis cop.

Under no circumstance should anyone in the United States die like that in the custody of law enforcement. The vast majority of demonstrators are good people with a serious concern this country must address. The Gazette editorial board passionately thanks and supports them for advocating racial justice. Our country urgently needs to hear this message.

Yet, criminal protesters have nothing in common with the people genuinely advocating justice and peace. They are hurting cops, small-business owners and minority communities. The criminals, which includes anyone throwing bottles and bricks and starting fires, have no right to remain on the streets. Arrest them.

Instead, city leaders throughout the country act as if rioters have a right to cause bodily harm, destroy property, and otherwise ruin the lives of innocent people who had nothing to do with Floyd’s murder. Left-wing Minneapolis Mayor Jeff Frey aided and abetted criminals by ordering armed cops to leave their precinct building and sacrifice it to a crowd that subsequently burned it.

With barely challenged criminal riots emerging across the land, Trump wants state and local officials to protect the public. If they don’t, he will do it for them by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. The law authorizes a president to deploy the military domestically to control civil disorder, insurrection and rebellion. God forbid Trump has to use it.

Eleven presidents have used the act 19 times since 1808. Ulysses S. Grant used it to suppress uprisings of the Ku Klux Klan. Woodrow Wilson to calm the Colorado Coalfield War, a mining strike. Franklin Delano Roosevelt to subdue race riots. Dwight Eisenhower to enforce desegregation at one Arkansas school. George H. W. Bush invoked the act to calm disorder after Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and to subdue the Rodney King riots of 1992.

The nationwide riots of the past two weeks arguably surpass the magnitude of other occasions in which presidents have used the Insurrection Act. Yet, one would think Trump was the first president to consider it. Polis and Weiser – Democrats signaling their anti-Trump bona fides – say they will sue if the president uses the Insurrection Act.

Weiser won’t sue Chinese communists for willful negligence that unleashed COVID-19. Yet, he’s eager to sue his country’s president if he tries to protect the public from criminals.

In an act of insubordination, Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Wednesday announced his opposition to the Insurrection Act. It should be used only in the “most urgent and dire of situations,” he said. “We are not in one of those situations now.”

That’s easy to say when the bricks aren’t headed his way. No one burned the Pentagon, thank God; just a Midwest precinct station and small businesses that represent the lifelong savings of immigrants, minorities and other average Americans.

Most peace-loving, rational people want the country to solve this without troops. They want governors, attorneys general, mayors, police chiefs, and sheriffs to uphold the law in their respective jurisdictions. It is a sad day, indeed, when the military must do it for them. It should be a last resort but cannot be dismissed in defiance of Trump. It is an option for good reason.

Mayor Suthers and Police Chief Vince Niski have done a laudable job protecting lives and property from criminal insurgents who crash peaceful demonstrations. If leaders of all states and cities would uphold the law, we could rule out military force.

Polis and Weiser should lose the politically indulgent lawsuit idea, which poses a baseless challenge to well-established presidential authority. They should stay laser-focused on keeping Coloradans, most especially peaceful demonstrators, safe from criminals exploiting a cause. That would negate need to send in the troops.