At the top of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver addressed the George Floyd protests and Donald Trump’s bible photo opp and the excessive force police officers use — specifically against th…
addressed the George Floyd protests and Donald Trump’s bible photo opp and the excessive force police officers use — specifically against the Black community. That said, he spent the entire episode unpacking the problematic police system.
“For much of U.S. history, law enforcement meant enforcing laws that were explicitly designed to subjugate Black people,” he said. Some of the country’s first law enforcement units were slave patrols and just because slavery ended, it doesn’t mean that was the end of white power. He cites a quote from a post-Civil War era Alabama planter that was included in Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow.
As funding for police increased, spending on key social services were slashed. This added more responsibility on the police and they were doing far too much than they can handle. As a result, the police are the only public source for some communities. “When faced with accountability they don’t like, unions will often issue the ultimate threat: simply pull back and let crime rise,” he said before throwing it to a clip of the head of New York’s largest police union who was clearly upset after a judge recommended they fire the police officer that killed Eric Garner. He was fired up that the police officers had to “take it a step slower.”
“If you’re spending a over a billion dollars on misconduct settlements you might want to seriously examine what conduct looks like,” Oliver stated. He then references how Michael Brown’s family wanted to file a civil suit against the Ferguson officer that killed him.
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