Comedian John Oliver turned his attention Sunday to Ferguson, Mo. on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight.”
Oliver outlined how both police and elected officials had failed Ferguson, beginning with the city’s mayor, who tried to diminish the racial disparity between law enforcement and the community in cable news interviews.
“As a general rule, no one should ever be allowed to say ‘There is no history of racial tension here,'” Oliver said. “Because that sentence has never been true anywhere on Earth.”
Case in point: blacks constituted nearly 86 percent of police stops and 93 percent of arrests in Ferguson.
“If you are white in Ferguson, you’d need to be snorting cocaine directly off your dashboard to get stopped by the police,” Oliver quipped.
The comedian also slammed the local police force for wearing “f*cking camo” on duty, pointing out that they’re “northwest of St. Louis, not northwest of the Amazon.” But Oliver reserved some of his most biting criticism for Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D), who he said came off as a patronizing, “pissed-off vice principal” when he imposed a curfew to keep the peace.
“If even the governor can’t distinguish between the good and the bad elements of the community and has decided to punish everyone equally, then that should go both ways,” he said. “I know the police love their ridiculous, unnecessary military equipment, so here’s another patronizing test. Let’s take it all away from them and if they can make through a whole month without killing a single unarmed black man, then, and only then, can they get their f*cking toys back.”
Watch below:
