John Oliver Lambastes Ferguson Police

Keeping track of the news in Ferguson, Missouri, for the past week following the fatal police shooting of unarmed teen Michael Brown was equal parts disturbing, depressing, shocking, and completely unsurprising. Twitter is king for following #Ferguson updates, but that ol' forgotten medium the television still has some utility here thanks to John Oliver and his HBO show Last Week Tonight.

Sunday night (August 17), the Daily Show-groomed satirist took on the racial implications of the story and Ferguson's military-police-industrial complex, approaching it with his balance of sensical outrage and sarcasm to distill the complex story to its simplest terms. Oliver did this mainly by laying into the Ferguson police, wondering why this podunk town has a police force that's outfitted like the army in District 9, and basically made the issues so clear that even the lizard part of your brain can understand why everything is fucked with our nation's police forces. It's all summed up with his brilliant twist of an old adage as a message for cops in the U.S.: "Dress for the job you have, not the job you want."

And, keep in mind, this was all recorded BEFORE Missouri's governor called in the national guard, and before you were glued to your Twitter feed in the wee hours last night reading about the fallout and the unprecedented Amnesty International delegation.

Watch the whole segment up top.

[via Gawker]