DURHAM, New Hampshire — Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson joked on Wednesday about taunting cops “back in the day, before they would shoot you,” comments that drew laughter from his audience at the University of New Hampshire but widespread criticism online.
Talking about his childhood in Detroit, Carson told the crowd about the trouble he’d make with friends, “throwing rocks at cars,” which he joked “everybody did … because it was so much fun.” With a good-natured smile, he described how the drivers would chase him “and we would run slowly to encourage them — and just when they were nearby, we were gone like a flash.”
When cops came, “always in unmarked cars, they’d be chasing us across the field and they would think they trapped us” at 10-feet-tall fences, Carson said.
But the cops “had no idea how adept we were at getting over those fences,” Carson joked with a smile, describing how he and his friends would leap over the fences in a single bound “and laugh at them because they couldn’t do that.”
“That was back in the day before they would shoot you,” Carson added, pausing for a beat before chuckling heartily and adding, “I’m just kidding, you know they wouldn’t do that.”
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Carson used the joke to segue into an expression of support for police officers and a plea for unity and respect for all, even those with whom you don’t agree.
“I really have a tremendous amount of respect for the police because they put their lives on the line every day for us, and they are the very last people that we should be targeting,” he said.









