Presidential candidate Rand Paul addressed the Baltimore County Republicans in a packed hall Tuesday. He discussed the issue of justice reform, a topic he’s worked on for several years, but this time his speech had a poignant tie-in — the recent suicide of Kalief Browder.
“I’ve been telling this story for about a year and a half, two years now. It makes me sad. I thought about not telling the story again. But I think this young man’s memory should help us to try to change things. He died this weekend. He committed suicide. His name was Kalief Browder. He was a 16-year-old teenager from the Bronx. He was arrested, accused of a crime, and sent to Rikers,” Paul said to the crowded room.
According to Bloomberg Politics, Paul retold the facts about Browder being imprisoned for three years, two in solitary confinement. During his time in prison, he was beaten by both prison guards and fellow inmates and denied food and showering privileges. In the end, he never went to trial and was released, free of all charges.
“Are we going to let you be raped and murdered and pillaged before you’ve been convicted? He wasn’t even convicted! So when I see people angry and upset, I’m not here to excuse violence in the cities, but I see people angry. I see where some of the anger is coming from,” said the senator from Kentucky.
Paul asked his fellow conservatives to look how poor people in America live and to see how they view the injustice. He challenged the audience to understand the anger of many in the African American community.
Without discussing any recent riots, he insisted that Democrats were garnering votes off the disenfranchised people who were marginalized by tough-on-crime policies.
“The Democrats have utterly failed our inner cities, and utterly failed the poor. Don’t let them tell us it wasn’t them. A lot of these policies came from Bill Clinton. In Ferguson, for every 100 black women, there are 60 black men. That’s because 40 are incarcerated. Am I saying they did nothing wrong, and it’s all racism? No. What I am telling you is that white kids don’t get the same justice… the arrests in Baltimore are 15 to one black to white for marijuana arrests,” Paul told the silent crowd.
“I’m not saying it’s racism,” Paul continued, “Many officials are black, so it’s not racism. But something’s wrong with the war on drugs that we decide to lock people up for 5, 10, 15 years.”
