Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said that while safety and security are paramount during riots like the ones that have taken place in Baltimore, longer-term societal problems that warrant a discussion include the breakdown of the family structure, the lack of a moral code and a “lack of fathers.”
“I think there’s a time and a place for talking about root causes, but I think in the middle of a riot, you’ve got to have safety and security and really, that needs to be all that’s discussed in the interim, and the mayor obviously could have been stronger with saying, ’We’re going to secure the city and we’re not going to have thievery, we’re not going to have thuggery, we’re not going to have looting,’ ” Mr. Paul said Tuesday on Laura Ingraham’s radio show. “And that’s what you have to do.”
An overnight curfew appeared to have calmed things somewhat in Baltimore, which on Monday saw violent protests and riots after the funeral of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who died earlier this month while in police custody.
“Root causes can be discussed — there are a lot of root cultural causes for why violence breaks out, but there’s no excuse for it,” said Mr. Paul, a 2016 presidential candidate. “So I think it’s a mistake to really get too much to root causes, saying, oh, we can excuse behavior — there’s no excuse for the behavior and the police have to do what they have to do. I am very sympathetic to the plight of the police in this, but at the same time there are separate, other questions … none of these justify the behavior.”
“The young man that died in policy custody — justice has to come from that, and the sooner that there’s a public report on what happen[s] with that, the better. Still, none of this excuses thuggery and what went on in Baltimore,” he added.
Mr. Paul was asked if he would have liked to have heard from the president earlier on.
“You know, I don’t know if there is an answer from the federal government,” he said. “It obviously is a local problem, primarily. But you do have to have enough show of security, enough show of a police force, to deter the kind of action. Once [it] happens, it sort of spirals out of control. It’s depressing. It’s sad. It’s scary.
He said he came through Baltimore on the train Monday night, and “I’m glad the train didn’t stop.”
“The thing is that really there’s so many things we can talk about, it’s something we talk about not in the immediate aftermath but over time: the breakdown of the family structure, the lack of fathers, the lack of sort of a moral code in our society,” he said. “And this isn’t just a racial thing, it goes across racial boundaries, but we do have problems in our country, and you see this, and you see that we’re close to the tipping point — closer to the tipping point than many think.
“So there are a lot of things that can be done, but there can be no excuse for the behavior,” he said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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