Former Baltimore Ravens all-pro linebacker Ray Lewis has a message for the kids rioting in Baltimore — the violence needs to stop.
"No way this can happen in our city. No! Young kids you got to understand something. Get off the streets. Violence is not the answer. Violence has never been the answer," said Lewis, who played for the Ravens from 1996 to 2012, in a video message posted on his Facebook page.
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Lewis said that rioting in the name of Freddie Gray doesn't do anything to help him. Gray, a 25-year-old black man, mysteriously died on April 19 from a severe spinal cord injury that occurred while hew was in police custody on April 12.
"Baltimore, get off the streets. Kids, go home, stay home," Lewis said.
"You don't have no right to do what you're doing to this city. Too many hard working people built this city. We put this city together. We put this city on our back," Lewis said to the rioters.
"But rioting in our streets is wrong. It's dead wrong," he added.
"Too many babies paying attention to this craziness, and the sad part is, we've got young kids trying to tell us how they're going to dictate our city — that won't happen," he explained.
"We must change this right now — Stop the violence. Go home. I'm telling you, go home. Whatever I gotta do, it will not happen on our clock. It will not happen on our clock," he said.
The former football star conceded that there is "a deeper issue. We know what the jungle looks like, but this isn't it.
"We know what's going on. We know the problems. We know there was wrong done. We know we're not getting the right justice. We know all these answers," Lewis explained.
"We got to go back to the beginning. It takes a village. It takes a whole village to raise one child," but he contends that "we got to redefine what this looks like."
But first, we must "stop the violence."
Violent protests broke out in Baltimore Monday following the funeral of Gray, spreading across East and West Baltimore and downtown near Camden Yards. Major League Baseball has since announced that Wednesday's game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox
will be closed to the public due to the violence.
Fifteen police officers have been injured in the riots so far. About half a dozen were still in the hospital due to their injuries Tuesday, with one in critical condition,
CNN is reporting.
In addition, hundreds of people were arrested along with almost 150 vehicle fires and almost 20 buildings set on fire.
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