The rioting that erupted Monday in Baltimore brings to mind a visit to Slippery Rock University about 15 years ago by celebrated actor Edward James Olmos.

Olmos, who played Lt. Martin Castillo in the “Miami Vice” TV series, recalled the 1992 Rodney King race riots in Los Angeles which left 53 people dead, about 2,500 injured and more than $800 million in damage.

“I had just seen a man shot dead in front of me,” Olmos said. “I held him as he died. His blood and brains slipped through my fingers.”

It was after 3 a.m. The National Guard was marching on LA.

“I didn’t know what else to do. There was broken glass all over the street. I got a broom and started sweeping.”

That’s where a passing CNN news crew spotted Olmos and stopped for a live interview. The exposure sparked a “broom brigade” movement as thousands descended to help Olmos with the volunteer cleanup.

Twenty three years later and in another coastal city, the race riots have returned.

The violence started after school Monday in West Baltimore two weeks after Freddie Gray, 25, died of a severe spinal injury while in police custody. By midnight the rioting spread to East Baltimore and neighborhoods close to downtown and near Camden Yards, Baltimore’s iconic baseball stadium.

Rioters hurled rocks, bricks and bottles at police. They looted and burned shops, attacked and ignited police cars and destroyed other vehicles. And when firefighters responded to the blazing stores, the rioters cut holes in the fire hoses.

At least 15 police officers were hurt Monday. Six were hospitalized. There were 144 vehicle fires, 15 structure fires and nearly 200 arrests.

It’s a vain exercise trying to make sense of senseless destruction. That didn’t stop Peter Angelos, executive vice president of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team, from trying.

“We need to keep in mind people are suffering and dying around the U.S.,” Angelos tweeted. “There is a far bigger picture for poor Americans in Baltimore and everywhere who don’t have jobs and are losing economic, civil and legal rights and this ... makes inconvenience at a ballgame irrelevant in light of the needless suffering government is inflicting upon ordinary Americans.”

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake wasn’t so sympathetic. “I understand anger, but what we’re seeing isn’t anger,” she said. “It’s disruption of a community. The same community they say they care about, they’re destroying. You can’t have it both ways.”

There’s no way to accurately predict what will come next, whether violence might spread to other cities or whether online threats of violence against police officers are carried out.

But it’s a safe bet that some manifestation of a “broom brigade” will emerge — good people willing to clean up, restore some sanity and start over.

The violence eventually will subside — we pray it already is subsiding. Modern-day philosophers, academics and politicians will debate its root causes, and white-black race relations will become a hot-button issue in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, good-hearted people will descend on Baltimore, brooms in hand, to begin the healing process that must occur. They will merit our praise and gratitude.