Obama: Baltimore Riots Should Prompt “Soul-Searching”

President Barack Obama said there is "no excuse" for the Baltimore riots, but he also said the entire country should be doing some "soul-searching," a day after that city was plunged into chaos. Baltimore’s rioters should be “treated as criminals,” Obama said, adding that the situation cannot be left to police. "They're not protesting. They're not making a statement. They're stealing," Obama said at an unrelated White House news conference alongside the Japanese prime minister. "It's a handful of people taking advantage of the situation." But Obama also said, in a long response to a question about the latest in a series of protests over young black men's deaths at the hands of police, that the problem wasn't a new one. "If we really want to solve the problem, we could. It would require everybody to say this is important, this is significant and that we just don't pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns, when a young man is shot or when his spine is snapped."

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