You know, what's crazy is here we are.
Another Monday...
Another Monday in the middle of corona
and in the middle of protests
about police brutality.
And yet it's another Monday
of another police brutality incident.
Like, another story
that has people going,
"How long? How much? When is it enough?"
The story is out of Atlanta.
Rayshard Brooks.
And forgive me if I get any of the details wrong,
but f... as far as I know,
you've probably seen the video or you've read the story.
Rayshard was in his car in a Wendy's drive-through.
He was... drunk or tipsy
or he had-had alcohol and he fell asleep.
Fell asleep, people are driving around his car.
And so somebody at the Wendy's called the cops.
The cops arrive at Wendy's
and, you know, they get Ra-Rayshard out of the car.
And they start talking to him for about 30 minutes.
You know, asking him is he drunk,
why is he driving, what's going on.
I... I mean, it seems pretty standard.
And the whole time, throughout this video,
you have human beings being human beings.
You have Rayshard,
who's clearly inebriated,
and he's talking to the cops.
And you have the cops asking him the questions,
and what was interesting ab... for me about this video was...
at, like, in the beginning, it seems like
everything is gonna be fine.
The cops are talking to him like a person.
They're not being...
they're not being aggro,
they're not being disrespectful,
they're not being mean or anything.
He's being respectful. He's calling them "sir."
He's not-he's not cussing them out.
He's... he's offering to-to walk ho...
Everything is going well. Everything is going well.
And then...
in one moment--
in just a few seconds--
every part of that normal story
turns into the abnormal ending
that we've come to know
as interactions with police and black people.
Because the police try and arrest him.
He-he resists and he wrestles with the police.
In the scuffle, they try and tase him,
while is he's being tased he grabs the taser,
he gets up, he runs away.
And I'm missing a few beats of the story
because I-I don't want to take you through too much of it,
but-but that's essentially what happens.
Rayshard runs away.
And...
the police chase him.
As he's running, he shoots off the taser
and one of the cops switches his weapons
from a taser to a gun and shoots Rayshard
two or three times in the back,
and he's dead.
And...
immediately, everyone... everyone goes, you know,
everyone goes to their battle stations.
That's what plagues me about these stories--
everyone just goes to their battle stations.
You know, immediately, people go,
"Well, once again, another example
"of black people resisting the cops and being criminals
"and why are you driving drunk
and why are you running away from the police, and why..."
And then, of course, you have other people, you know,
in their battle stations saying, "Oh, of course, another story
"of cops who immediately shoot a black man
for just sleeping in his car and..."
But, like, it's messy.
No one wants to admit that the thing is messy.
It's (bleep) messy.
If this story didn't happen now,
maybe we'd... we would be looking at it differently.
But it's a messy story.
It's not the perfect story.
And, in a weird way, it not being the perfect story
means we should look at it
in the most perfect way possible.
We should try and break it down and understand
how something like this comes to be,
because we don't always have video like this,
we don't always have stories like this.
And we don't even a... we don't even always
look at it like this.
But let's just take a moment to talk about what happened.
You have-you have a man who is sleeping in his car.
Right? A man who's sleeping in his car, and he's drunk.
Was he drunk driving? Let's say he is. Right?
So he's broken some law-- a law not worth dying for.
I think we can all agree on that.
The police approach him.
And even then, I ask the question,
why are armed police dealing with a man
who's sleeping in his car?
He posed no threat to anybody.
No one at Wendy's felt afraid, cars are driving around him,
he's not stopping people from ordering food,
so-so why are armed police there in the first place?
That's the question, I think. Like, these are all
the questions we need to ask. Why? Why, why, why, why, why?
Why are armed police the first people
who have to go and respond to somebody
who's sleeping in their car who's drunk?
Secondly, why do the police not give...
I mean, the man says to them, "I will walk home."
If you're protecting and serving people,
what is the true purpose
of you not wanting people to drive drunk?
It's that you don't want them killing themselves
and other people.
In this instance no one has died because of his driving,
and he hadn't killed himself because of his driving.
And so, as a police officer,
maybe it's because I live in a utopian world
where the police are truly just trying to protect and serve,
not trying to write enough tickets,
not trying to get enough people arrested,
not trying to fill quotas, no,
they're trying to protect and serve.
In that instance,
you would hope a policeman would say,
"Sir, you do not look fit to drive.
"You said your sister lives around the corner.
"You said you live... Let's take you... We'll take you home.
"We didn't find you driving drunk,
"we found you asleep in a car.
"So we'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
"The country's burning down because of the way
"black people are-are dealt with by the police,
"so let us show you, just in a moment,
"that it doesn't always have to end
the way you think it has to end."
I'm not saying they had to do that,
but it would have been nice.
They arrest him.
He fights.
Now, you know what's messy about this whole thing
is we forget you are dealing with a drunk person.
You are dealing with somebody... The very fact that
you're not allowed to sign a contract when you're drunk,
the very fact that you're not al...
you're not allowed to do anything when you're drunk...
tells us something about drunk... We know
what a drunk person is in society.
They're not gonna do the logical thing,
so, as a policeman,
if a drunk person does an illogical thing,
what... like, I feel like you should acknowledge
the fact that they're drunk.
It doesn't mean they deserve to die. They're drunk.
We know what drunk people do.
I've been drunk, you've been drunk, everyone has been drunk.
You don't deserve to be die for being drunk.
And if police cannot respond or cannot handle a drunk person,
the... well, then...
then they shouldn't be responding.
If your responding to a person who's drunk
means that person can be dead...
The whole point of you going there
was to make sure that people don't die
because of whatever's happened. But if the people
are gonna end up dead anyway, then what's the point?
And people say he shouldn't have resis... Yeah, he's drunk.
I'm not excusing his ac... But he's drunk.
In a situation like that, the sober person... in my opinion,
the sober person-- the onus is upon them
to make sure the situation doesn't get out of hand.
You're sober. He's drunk.
How are two sober men
wrestling with a drunk person on the ground?
How does it get that far?
How does it end with him losing his life?
And people always say the same thing.
They go, "Well, you know, if you didn't do that,
then you would still be alive."
They say this shit all the time. "If you didn't do that."
But the-the truth is...
the "ifs" keep on changing.
"Oh, if you didn't... you didn't resist arrest...
If you didn't resist arrest, you would still be alive."
Or "If you didn't run away from the cops,
you would still be alive."
"Well, if you didn't have a toy gun
"and were 12 years old in the middle of a park,
then you would have still been alive."
"Well, you know what? If you weren't wearing a hoodie,
you would have still been alive."
"Well, you know, if you didn't talk back to the cops,
you would have still been alive."
"If you weren't sleeping in your bed as a black woman,
you would have still been alive."
There's one common thread beyond all the "ifs."
"If you weren't black, maybe you'd still be alive."
Well, that's our show for tonight.
But before we go, The Daily Show and Comedy Central
have been donating to three groups
who are fighting against police brutality and systemic racism,
the NAACP Legal Defense Fund,
the Equal Justice Initiative,
and the Bail Project.
Now, if you'd like to help and you have anything to give,
then all you need to do is go to the following links
and donate whatever you can.
Until tomorrow though, stay safe out there.
Remember to wear your mask.