Lawmakers Reject Paddling Bill

An Assembly committee has rejected a paddlings-for-graffiti-artists bill for the second time, despite support for the measure from boxer Tony (The Tiger) Lopez.

Lopez said the spankings and whippings his father gave him when he was a difficult teen-ager made him the success he is today.

Lopez spoke Wednesday at a Capitol news conference to support a bill by Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange) that would allow courts to order paddlings to punish teen-agers for graffiti.

“He didn’t abuse me, but he hit me, spanked me and whipped me so I understood,” Lopez, a former boxing champion, said of his father.

“If that was child abuse, why am I doing so well? It’s not abuse, it’s education.”

Lopez said he had a “bad attitude” as a child and was a “goof-off in school.” He said mere spankings did not affect him, and his father had to use more serious beatings.

Lopez, 31, has no children, but when he does, “if my kids get out of hand, they will get paid. I think I was brought up just fine.”

He said paddling would teach errant teens “that whatever they do, you will get paid.”

But hours later the Assembly Ways and Means Committee rejected the bill for a second time.

Conroy said he will reintroduce the bill in December.