- The main story is about the shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old man by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri
- The police handling of the situation has been criticized, including their refusal to release the officer's name and the release of a video unrelated to the shooting
- There is tension between the community and the police force, which is predominantly white in a town that is two-thirds African-American
- The police force has been accused of targeting minorities, with a high percentage of stops, searches, and arrests involving African-Americans
- The police have received military equipment, which has raised concerns about their use of force and militarization
- The wearing of camouflage and pointing guns in the photo from Ferguson is criticized, as it is not appropriate for a police force.

- The military is trained on escalation of force, meaning they only point their weapons when ready to shoot.
- Police in Ferguson were seen pointing their weapons at people who did not pose a threat.
- Police departments have access to military equipment, leading to a rise in SWAT team usage.
- 79% of SWAT deployments are for executing search warrants, mostly for drug investigations.
- The police force in Ferguson needs improvement, as seen by the behavior of some officers.
- The governor of Missouri implemented a curfew in Ferguson, which is seen as patronizing.
- The author suggests taking away the police's military equipment and testing their ability to not harm unarmed individuals before giving it back.

In the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, John Oliver explores the racial inequality in treatment by police as well as the increasing militarization of America’s local police forces.

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Our main story tonight concerns the past week's terrible events in Missouri.

An officer shot an 18 year old man outside an apartment complex in Ferguson, Missouri.

It is unclear at this hour what led to the shooting, but witnesses say the teenager was unarmed.

Angry confrontations between protesters and police in riot gear.

The same anger and outrage that exploded into a chaotic night of looting and violence.

This whole story is depressingly familiar, and there are so many unanswered questions regarding why an officer would shoot an unarmed teenager.

What is absolutely clear is that the police have handled everything since then terribly, and the tone deafness began with this.

Louis County Police Chief John Belmar said...

It was more than just a couple, but I don't think it was, many more than that.

Look, listen everyone, only very many more than 1 bullet was fired, so everybody calm down, shall we?

The police then refused for days to release the name of the officer involved, and when they eventually did, they packaged it with a DVD extra that no 1 wanted.

At the same time, they released video of Michael Brown allegedly carrying out a store robbery minutes before he was shot and killed.

Yeah, of course it has, because it's irrelevant.

If the police wanted to distract everyone with a video that has absolutely nothing to do with Michael Brown's shooting, they should have just released Ghostbusters instead.

It's exactly as relevant to everything that happened afterwards.

But the more the week went on, the more you got the sense that those in charge in Ferguson don't have the best sense of how their community feels.

We've never seen this kind of violence, we've never seen this kind of frustration or tension between the races.

I've always been proud to say that to people.

I know we've always gotten along, and I know our community still gets along very well.

Presumably, that is why I, the mayor of Ferguson, I'm currently on national f**king television.

Presumably, we're talking about how well our town is getting along right now, and always has.

The thing is, if you ask around in Ferguson, you get a slightly different story.

It's all through the day, it's all through the night.

Here's the thing the mayor doesn't understand.

As a general rule, no 1 should ever be allowed to say there is no history of racial tension here.

Because that sentence has never been true anywhere on Earth.

-...there is tension between emperor penguins and gen 2 penguins.

Fuck you, gen 2 penguins, flapping over here, stealing our fish.

Not you, chinstrap penguins, you're cool.

So, which 1 of these 2 men is right about what life as a young African-American in Ferguson is like?

Well, to answer that, let's look at the police force.

What does it look like in a town which is about two-thirds African-American?

The number and, how many of them are white?

3 of our African-Americans, but I actually believe it's 5.

There was 6, but 1 left, fairly recently.

We also have a Hispanic and 2, Asian Pacific

We got a couple of white guys who occasionally listen to hip-hop music.

Also, also, also, we have 6 Norwegian-Americans who really enjoyed The Lion King on Broadway.

But despite the presence of both of the Pacific Islanders, and of course, the Hispanic...

The Ferguson police do seem to target minorities.

86% of police stops are African-Americans.

92% of police searches, nearly 93% of arrests.

Even though they stopped more blacks, more whites had contraband.

Yeah, of course more whites had contraband.

They knew that if you look like this, you don't get stopped.

If you are white in Ferguson, you would need to be snorting cocaine directly off your dashboard to get stopped by the police.

Whereas, if you're an African-American in Ferguson, like, say, Henry Davis here, you may have a slightly different experience.

Because while in custody in the Ferguson jail in 2009, officers grabbed him and pushed him and struck him multiple times.

They say they were provoked, although oddly, there is no video of this incident, despite the fact the jail is equipped with video cameras.

And what is known, though, at this point, is that he was later charged with 4 counts of destruction of city property for bleeding on their uniforms.

And I've gotta say, he was lucky that he wasn't eating spaghetti at the time of his beating, or they would have upgraded that charge to a felony.

The county police also have had their share of problems.

Louis County police lieutenant is without a job tonight.

He was fired for allegedly ordering patrol officers to arrest black people shopping in South County.

Oh, it wasn't just that he ordered racial profiling, it was how he allegedly did it.

With his colleagues claiming that he said things like, Let's have a black day, and let's make the jail cells more colorful.

Let's have a black day is an awesome thing to say if you are shaft.

And let's make the jail cells more colorful is entirely appropriate if you're an interior designer with a folder full of paint swatches.

However, if you're a white police officer, it's not ideal to say either of those, which is not to say that all cops are bad.

Also, the people of Ferguson want and need an effective police force.

But perhaps their relationship was best summed up by this photo from earlier this week.

Not just ludicrously aggressive police facing off against an unarmed man, but also the fact that someone has clearly written, -"Fuck the police." -$HONKS On the post box.

Something that apparently CNN did not notice when they were using this photo during all of their coverage.

Now, you might also notice in that photo that the police are troublingly dressed like they're about to launch an assault on Fallujah.

Well, it turns out that that is no coincidence.

Since 1996, in response to the war on drugs, the Department of Defense transferred $4.3 billion in military equipment to local and state police.

After 9-11, the Department of Homeland Security made additional equipment available to local law enforcement through federal funds for terrorism prevention.

And this has happened on such a scale that it's enabled small towns like Keene, New Hampshire, to apply for a Bearcat, a military-grade armored personnel truck, which they needed because, as their application argued, the terrorism threat is far-reaching and often unforeseen.

And cited as a possible target, their annual pumpkin festival.

-♪ Pumpkin festival ♪ -♪ Pumpkin festival Specifically, specifically, this pumpkin festival.

Good luck easily outmaneuvering that, teenagers with baseball bats.

And if you're wondering what it feels like to have a mind-resistant vehicle on the streets of your town, I give you a YouTube video of 2 dudes from Saginaw, Michigan.

Dang, look, he doesn't want anybody to see him in there.

Look how big these tires are compared to our...

be fair, that is exactly how they reacted when a Chipotle first opened there.

But the point is, listen carefully as 1 of them suddenly realizes something.

Because unless you live in downtown Kabul, There is no practical need for anything like that in your town.

The army itself, actually, in a newsletter, a few months ago, recommended against, using MRAPs even at U.S.

You know, on paved streets in the United States, they're actually unsafe.

They tear up the streets, they have a high rollover potential.

The only vehicle that should be tearing up the streets of Saginaw is Chad's souped-up Honda Civic.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So why, in this photo from Ferguson, are they wearing f***ing camo?

If they want to blend in with their surroundings, they should be dressed as a dollar store.

Look in the photo where their guns are pointed.

If you were actually in the military, you would know that you are not supposed to do that.

In the military, we're trained on something called escalation of force, which basically means the only time that you're really gonna point a weapon directly at someone, is when you're ready to pull the trigger.

And instead of that, we've seen in Ferguson that police are just wandering around with their weapons up at all times, pointing them at people that obviously didn't pose a threat.

Well, they don't currently pose a threat, but it's really all about what they might do.

Now, they could, For instance, join the police, be given a gun they're not trained to use properly, and then wander around pointing it at people, that would be f***ing terrifying.

If you are a cop in the United States, you should dress for the job you have, not the job you want.

Because if you have all this equipment, it's going to go to your head.

The police there got a tank a while back, and up until a few days ago, this video was on the front page of their website.

-♪♪ -♪♪ -♪ We're gonna stop a buggery at Little Caesar's!

We're gonna stop a buggery at Little Caesars!

The name of that song is, and this is true, Die, Motherf***er, Die.

LAUGHTER And it was a good choice, because believe me, that video does not pair well with Simon and Garfunkel.

Now that video was just a training exercise, but the problem is, police departments don't just use this stuff for training.

Thanks in part to this kind of access to military hardware, there has been a massive rise in both the number and the use of police department SWAT teams.

The number of SWAT raids have gone up by 1,400 percent since the 1980s.

An estimated 50,000 now take place every year.

Face down!' -'Face down!' -'Face down!' -'Face down!'

Just keep that clip in mind when I tell you that 79 percent of SWAT deployments are now for executing search warrants.

And most of those were for drug investigations.

So, yes, if you are getting high in your dorm room right now, you are not paranoid, there is a SWAT team outside, and they are coming to get you.

All of which brings us back to this week and to Ferguson.

Well, you could demilitarize the police force to stop things looking like this, but that would just change the optics.

The substance of the problem would still be there, as was embodied by a police officer on the streets of Ferguson this week, who was dressed entirely normally.

The phrase, bring it, you f***ing animals, is barely acceptable during a zoo escape.

It's not even acceptable in the restaurant in Mary Poppins where penguins are waiters.

They'll piss in your soup, and you'll deserve it.

-...betrays an inability to see the citizens of Ferguson as individuals, and instead treats them as a threatening whole.

And that is a top-down problem, because last night, this is how the governor of Missouri decided to try and rebuild trust between the police and the community.

I signed an order declaring a state of emergency in order to implementation of a curfew.

In the impact, in a curfew in the impacted area of Ferguson.

So you took a community tired of being treated as criminals and imprisoned them all in their own houses for a night.

And in doing so, employed the tone of a pissed off vice principal trying to restore order at an assembly.

If we're going to achieve justice, we must first have and maintain peace.

Look, let's see if you can all remain quiet for 20 minutes, and then we'll see if you can all go and play outside.

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.

I know the police love their ridiculous, unnecessary military equipment.

Let's take it all away from them, and if they can make it through a whole month without killing a single unarmed black man, then, and only then, can they get their...


Speaker 0: Our main story tonight concerns the past week's terrible events in Missouri.

Speaker 1: An officer shot an 18 year old man outside an apartment complex in Ferguson, Missouri.

Speaker 2: It is unclear at this hour what led to the shooting, but witnesses say the teenager was unarmed.

Speaker 3: Angry confrontations between protesters and police in riot gear. The same anger and outrage that exploded into a chaotic night of looting and violence.

Speaker 0: This whole story is depressingly familiar, and there are so many unanswered questions regarding why an officer would shoot an unarmed teenager. What is absolutely clear is that the police have handled everything since then terribly, and the tone deafness began with this.

Speaker 4: Asked how many times Brown was shot, St. Louis County Police Chief John Belmar said...

Speaker 5: It was more than just a couple, but I don't think it was, many more than that. -...many more

Speaker 6: than that. -...many more than that.

Speaker 0: Just... Just think about what he's saying there. Not much more than more than twice. Could you try and minimize this anymore? Look, listen everyone, only very many more than 1 bullet was fired, so everybody calm down, shall we?

The police then refused for days to release the name of the officer involved, and when they eventually did, they packaged it with a DVD extra that no 1 wanted.

Speaker 5: At the same time, they released video of Michael Brown allegedly carrying out a store robbery minutes before he was shot and killed. And that has sparked new outrage.

Speaker 0: Yeah, of course it has, because it's irrelevant. If the police wanted to distract everyone with a video that has absolutely nothing to do with Michael Brown's shooting, they should have just released Ghostbusters instead. It's exactly as relevant to everything that happened afterwards. But the more the week went on, the more you got the sense that those in charge in Ferguson don't have the best sense of how their community feels. Just listen to the mayor.

Speaker 7: We've never seen this kind of violence, we've never seen this kind of frustration or tension between the races. I've always been proud to say that to people. I know we've always gotten along, and I know our community still gets along very well.

Speaker 0: Oh, we're absolutely famous for it. Presumably, that is why I, the mayor of Ferguson, I'm currently on national f**king television. Presumably, we're talking about how well our town is getting along right now, and always has. The thing is, if you ask around in Ferguson, you get a slightly different story.

Speaker 6: The cops harass me, it's frequently. It's all through the day, it's all through the night. Then they not, beating us... Physically, they doing it verbally.

Speaker 0: Here's the thing the mayor doesn't understand. As a general rule, no 1 should ever be allowed to say there is no history of racial tension here. Because that sentence has never been true anywhere on Earth. Even in Antarctica... -...even in Antarctica...

-...there is tension between emperor penguins and gen 2 penguins. Fuck you, gen 2 penguins, flapping over here, stealing our fish. Not you, chinstrap penguins, you're cool. You... You guys are good at math.

So... So, which 1 of these 2 men is right about what life as a young African-American in Ferguson is like? Well, to answer that, let's look at the police force. What does it look like in a town which is about two-thirds African-American?

Speaker 2: What is the makeup of your police force? The number and, how many of them are white? I just want clarification of that.

Speaker 6: I mean, they

Speaker 8: keep saying 3 of our... 3 of our African-Americans, but I actually believe it's 5. There was 6, but 1 left, fairly recently. We also have a Hispanic and 2, Asian Pacific

Speaker 6: Islanders.

Speaker 0: Exactly. Look, it doesn't stop there, guys. We got a couple of white guys who occasionally listen to hip-hop music. I mean, Macklemore, sure, but still. Also, also, also, we have 6 Norwegian-Americans who really enjoyed The Lion King on Broadway.

So it's not comp... It's more diverse than it seems. But despite the presence of both of the Pacific Islanders, and of course, the Hispanic... -...let's not forget him. -...

The Ferguson police do seem to target minorities.

Speaker 4: 86% of police stops are African-Americans. 92% of police searches, nearly 93% of arrests.

Speaker 2: Even though they stopped more blacks, more whites had contraband.

Speaker 0: Yeah, of course more whites had contraband. They knew that if you look like this, you don't get stopped. If you are white in Ferguson, you would need to be snorting cocaine directly off your dashboard to get stopped by the police. Whereas, if you're an African-American in Ferguson, like, say, Henry Davis here, you may have a slightly different experience. Because while in custody in the Ferguson jail in 2009, officers grabbed him and pushed him and struck him multiple times.

They say they were provoked, although oddly, there is no video of this incident, despite the fact the jail is equipped with video cameras. And what is known, though, at this point, is that he was later charged with 4 counts of destruction of city property for bleeding on their uniforms. And I've gotta say, he was lucky that he wasn't eating spaghetti at the time of his beating, or they would have upgraded that charge to a felony. And that is just the local police. The county police also have had their share of problems.

Speaker 9: A St. Louis County police lieutenant is without a job tonight. He was fired for allegedly ordering patrol officers to arrest black people shopping in South County.

Speaker 0: Oh, it wasn't just that he ordered racial profiling, it was how he allegedly did it. With his colleagues claiming that he said things like, Let's have a black day, and let's make the jail cells more colorful. Now, let's be fair here. Let's have a black day is an awesome thing to say if you are shaft. And...

And... And let's make the jail cells more colorful is entirely appropriate if you're an interior designer with a folder full of paint swatches. However, if you're a white police officer, it's not ideal to say either of those, which is not to say that all cops are bad. They are clearly not. Also, the people of Ferguson want and need an effective police force.

But perhaps their relationship was best summed up by this photo from earlier this week. Not just ludicrously aggressive police facing off against an unarmed man, but also the fact that someone has clearly written, -"Fuck the police." -$HONKS On the post box. Something... Something that apparently CNN did not notice when they were using this photo during all of their coverage. So, they didn't see it.

Now, you might also notice in that photo that the police are troublingly dressed like they're about to launch an assault on Fallujah. Well, it turns out that that is no coincidence.

Speaker 4: Since 1996, in response to the war on drugs, the Department of Defense transferred $4.3 billion in military equipment to local and state police. After 9-11, the Department of Homeland Security made additional equipment available to local law enforcement through federal funds for terrorism prevention.

Speaker 0: That's right. And this has happened on such a scale that it's enabled small towns like Keene, New Hampshire, to apply for a Bearcat, a military-grade armored personnel truck, which they needed because, as their application argued, the terrorism threat is far-reaching and often unforeseen. And cited as a possible target, their annual pumpkin festival. -♪ Pumpkin festival ♪ -♪ Pumpkin festival Specifically, specifically, this pumpkin festival. Which is now being protected by this.

And... Good luck easily outmaneuvering that, teenagers with baseball bats. And if you're wondering what it feels like to have a mind-resistant vehicle on the streets of your town, I give you a YouTube video of 2 dudes from Saginaw, Michigan.

Speaker 6: Holy shit, dude. Super armored, dude. Dang, look, he doesn't want anybody to see him in there. Dude, you can't even see him. Dang!

It's crazy. Saginaw county sheriff, dude. It looks cool, dude. Look how big these tires are compared to our... It's taller than...

It's... Dude. That's awesome. Now, to be fair, to

Speaker 0: be fair, that is exactly how they reacted when a Chipotle first opened there. But... But the point is, listen carefully as 1 of them suddenly realizes something.

Speaker 6: Damn, dude, that's fucked up. Why? Has our city gotten that

Speaker 0: fucking bad? Here's the thing. No, it hasn't got that bad. Because unless you live in downtown Kabul, There is no practical need for anything like that in your town. Just ask the people that it came from.

Speaker 5: The army itself, actually, in a newsletter, a few months ago, recommended against, using MRAPs even at U.S. Military bases. You know, on paved streets in the United States, they're actually unsafe. They tear up the streets, they have a high rollover potential.

Speaker 0: Exactly. The only vehicle that should be tearing up the streets of Saginaw is Chad's souped-up Honda Civic. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Speaker 6: Dude! Dude, my car is sick, dude!

Speaker 0: -♪♪ The police are not soldiers. So why, in this photo from Ferguson, are they wearing f***ing camo? They are northwest of St. Louis, not northwest of the Amazon. If they want to blend in with their surroundings, they should be dressed as a dollar store.

And... -...and also... -...and also... -...also... -...also...

Look in the photo where their guns are pointed. If you were actually in the military, you would know that you are not supposed to do that.

Speaker 10: In the military, we're trained on something called escalation of force, which basically means the only time that you're really gonna point a weapon directly at someone, is when you're ready to pull the trigger. And instead of that, we've seen in Ferguson that police are just wandering around with their weapons up at all times, pointing them at people that obviously didn't pose a threat.

Speaker 0: Well, they don't currently pose a threat, but it's really all about what they might do. Now, they could, For instance, join the police, be given a gun they're not trained to use properly, and then wander around pointing it at people, that would be f***ing terrifying. -...the point is... The point is... -...whoo!

-...whoo! -...the point is... If you are a cop in the United States, you should dress for the job you have, not the job you want. Because if you have all this equipment, it's going to go to your head. Look at Doraville, Georgia.

Population 8,500. The police there got a tank a while back, and up until a few days ago, this video was on the front page of their website. -♪♪ -♪♪ -♪ We're gonna stop a buggery at Little Caesar's! We're gonna stop

Speaker 6: a buggery

Speaker 0: at Little Caesars! We're gonna stop a buggery at Little Caesars! Ah! Ah!

Speaker 6: APPLAUSE He...

Speaker 0: The name of that song is, and this is true, Die, Motherf***er, Die. LAUGHTER And it was a good choice, because believe me, that video does not pair well with Simon and Garfunkel. ♪

Speaker 6: With a firm and clear heart and...

Speaker 0: ♪ -♪

Speaker 6: ...and a... ♪ -♪ ...and a...

Speaker 0: ♪ -♪

Speaker 6: ...and a... ♪ -♪ ...and a...

Speaker 0: ♪ Now... Now that video was just a training exercise, but the problem is, police departments don't just use this stuff for training. Thanks in part to this kind of access to military hardware, there has been a massive rise in both the number and the use of police department SWAT teams.

Speaker 11: The number of SWAT raids have gone up by 1,400 percent since the 1980s. An estimated 50,000 now take place every year.

Speaker 6: -'Face down! Face down!' -'Face down!' -'Face down!' -'Face down!'

Speaker 0: Just keep that clip in mind when I tell you that 79 percent of SWAT deployments are now for executing search warrants. And most of those were for drug investigations. So, yes, if you are getting high in your dorm room right now, you are not paranoid, there is a SWAT team outside, and they are coming to get you. -...Oh! -...Oh!

-..Oh! -..Oh! All of which... All of which brings us back to this week and to Ferguson. So how do you improve things there?

Well, you could demilitarize the police force to stop things looking like this, but that would just change the optics. The substance of the problem would still be there, as was embodied by a police officer on the streets of Ferguson this week, who was dressed entirely normally.

Speaker 6: Bring it! I'm gonna f***ing end it. Bring it, huh? F***!

Speaker 0: The phrase, bring it, you f***ing animals, is barely acceptable during a zoo escape. It's... It's not even acceptable in the restaurant in Mary Poppins where penguins are waiters. -...bring it, you... Animal.

-... Hey, don't treat them like that. They'll piss in your soup. They'll piss in your soup, and you'll deserve it. -...that kind of statement...

-...betrays an inability to see the citizens of Ferguson as individuals, and instead treats them as a threatening whole. And that is a top-down problem, because last night, this is how the governor of Missouri decided to try and rebuild trust between the police and the community.

Speaker 3: I signed an order declaring a state of emergency in order to implementation of a curfew. In the impact, in a curfew in the impacted area of Ferguson.

Speaker 0: Oh, perfect. So you took a community tired of being treated as criminals and imprisoned them all in their own houses for a night. And in doing so, employed the tone of a pissed off vice principal trying to restore order at an assembly.

Speaker 3: If we're going to achieve justice, we must first have and maintain peace. This is a test. The eyes of the world are watching.

Speaker 0: That is profoundly patronizing. Look, let's see if you can all remain quiet for 20 minutes, and then we'll see if you can all go and play outside. 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. 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 it through a whole month without killing a single unarmed black man, then, and only then, can they get their... Toys back. -♪ ♪ -​ -♪ ♪

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Ferguson, MO and Police Militarization: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)