Denunciations of President Donald Trump’s recent disturbing comments encouraging police violence came swiftly from police departments and officers nationwide, including Boston Police Commissioner William Evans. “The Boston Police Department’s priority has been and continues to be building relationships and trust with the community we serve,’’ he said. “As a police department we are committed to helping people, not harming them.’’

Addressing law enforcement officers last week at New York’s Suffolk County Community College, Trump said, “When you see these thugs thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in — rough — I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.’ Like when you guys put somebody in the car, and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put your hand over, like, don’t hit their head and they just killed somebody, I said, ‘You can take the hand away, OK?’’’

Some of the officers laughed and applauded; it’s also worth noting that Trump used an archaic anti-Irish slur to describe a police vehicle.

Advocating harsh law enforcement is a longtime Trump tactic. After five black and Latino teenagers were wrongly accused of assaulting and raping a white woman in Central Park, in 1989, Trump spent more than $80,000 on full-page ads in New York newspapers calling for reinstatement of the death penalty.

While the pro-police group Blue Lives Matter insists Trump’s comments were “a joke,’’ there’s nothing funny when one considers the source. During his presidential campaign, Trump promoted himself as tough on crime and comfortable with the kind of rough-’em-up, lock-’em-up policing that has steadily frayed trust in law enforcement, particularly in communities of color. Many still believe Freddie Gray was subjected to a “rough ride’’ in a Baltimore police van that left him with fatal injuries, including a broken neck, in 2015.

Trump, who was endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union, reemphasized his law enforcement stance when he chose as attorney general Jeff Sessions, a man who believes federal oversight measures like consent decrees hurt police morale.

For a presidency that tests daily this nation’s capacity for outrage, Trump’s remarks are especially reckless. For law enforcement agencies, distancing themselves from his comments is an obligatory first step. Their pointed condemnations can only be reinforced by actions that demonstrate unequivocally in communities they serve that police brutality cannot and will not be tolerated — no matter what the president of the United States says.