Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson speaks in town hall meeting in Baltimore, Thursday May 7, 2015.
Dr. Ben Carson is emerging as one of the right wing hopefuls for the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections. But his comments defending police brutality and absolving the law enforcement from criticism reveal his campaign as more of the same.
Even though Carson has only recently announced his candidacy, he has taken the opportunity to weigh in on the Baltimore protests. His message is simple: don’t criticize the police, because then they’ll be too “timid”.
Last Thursday, Carson spoke in Baltimore, where he was a long time resident. At a Bilingual Church of Baltimore publicity op, Carson said that community leaders need to tell the people to “stop beating up” on the police.
But he didn’t mean physically. Carson explained that criticizing the police “too much” will create chaos. Police should basically be allowed to do what they are going to do without incurring criticism.
Community leaders, Carson added, should “calm the situation down” after police kill unarmed citizens.
In an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, Carson said that he the officers in the Freddie Gray case shouldn’t have been charged harshly.
“What we don’t want to happen is we beat up on the police all the time, and they get to the point where they second guess themselves and they become timid,” Carson contended.
“And then it endangers them and it also endangers the people they are supposed to be protecting, so that ends up being a worse situation.”
But shouldn’t police second guess themselves when it comes to the use of force? Why is that a bad idea? Carson failed to explain.