WASHINGTON — (CNN) Ben Carson said in Ferguson, Missouri, on Friday that police need to respect African-Americans, but he said black communities need to respect law enforcement as well.
“It is very important that police are taught to be respectful of everybody,” said Carson, the only African-American in either major party seeking the Oval Office. “My point is we need to make sure respect is offered in both directions.”
Carson also said that he would gladly meet with leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was galvanized by the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by a police officer in the city last summer. Carson said he believed much of the rage from the protests that gripped the Missouri city last year was inflamed by a decision to leave Brown’s body in the street for several hours, and said Brown’s body was “disrespected.”
He recounted a story one Ferguson resident told him of when she walked out of her house last year to find cops in riot gear and tanks on the streets.
“She said, ‘What’s going on?’ and they said, ‘Oh, nothing,'” Carson recalled. “That’s not respectful. That’s her neighborhood. You know she has a right to know what’s going on there and we need to teach our police to be respectful.”
But Carson said the movement needs to focus on challenges facing the entire black community, saying it should call itself “All Black Lives Matter” and address abortions and violence in black neighborhoods.
“We need to be looking at all the factors that have kept the black community in a dependent position for decades,” he said.
Carson has been surging in the polls recently, rising to second place in Iowa and most national polling amid broad discontent with professional politicians and Washington.
He joked at the news conference about people who previously dismissed his candidacy.
“I’ve heard these people say, ‘Well, he’s an idiot savant, he knows how to do neurosurgery,'” Carson said. “Anybody who thinks you can become a neurosurgeon by being an idiot savant is an idiot savant themselves.”
‘Added a lot to the debate’
Around the time Carson was speaking, Lindsey Graham was asked in Nashua, New Hampshire, about the neurosurgeon’s qualifications for being commander-in-chief. But the South Carolina senator, who has been citing his hawkish views on foreign policy in selling his presidential candidacy, declined to answer the question directly.
“I would say that Ben Carson is one of the nicest people you could ever meet. He’s added a lot to the debate, (and) I’m glad he’s part of the Republican Party,” Graham said. He added that while Carson is “a fine fellow,” he suggested that he has the better grasp on foreign policy.
“I know what we need to do, and it won’t be easy. But here’s the good news: it worked before, it will work again. We really just wasted all the gains from the surge,” Graham said.
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