John Oliver opened Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight” by ripping police officers who refuse to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. These cops are quitting their jobs in embarrassingly dramatic ways in a misguided protest against doing the right thing. One Washington state trooper recorded a video of himself in his patrol car signing off for the last time and finished by saying “[Governor] Jay Inslee can kiss my ass,” then dropping his walkie-talkie.
“Oooh, A walkie drop! You don’t see many of those!” Oliver mocked. “And that’s probably because it looks pathetic. Dropping a microphone is inherently exciting. You get the thud as it hits the floor, and the cheer of the crowd, but a walkie drop? That’s just a sad man sitting in a dark car dropping an object directly on his penis.”
Oliver said that across the country, a “small minority” of cops have gotten a lot of news coverage for threatening to quit their jobs rather than comply with vaccine mandates. “They frame this as a matter of individual liberty, even in cases where very little was being asked of them,” he said.
In Chicago, for example, cops can even keep working if they’re unvaccinated, so long as they register their vaccine status in an online portal and get tested regularly. But John Catanzara, the head of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police became apoplectic over that mild requirement, saying “do not comply with any direct order to fill out the portal. Period.” He also made a comparison to the Holocaust that was so offensive Oliver wouldn’t even play it. He just played part of Catanzara’s apology video, where he said he didn’t technically mention the Holocaust, just “the showers.”
Oliver reported that Officer Cataranza has been suspended from the force eight times and has received more misconduct complaints than 96% of his fellow CPD officers. And yet he is who police union members have chosen to represent them.
“So next time someone says to you, ‘Not all cops are bad,’ you can respond to them, ‘No, just their favorite ones,’” Oliver quipped.
Oliver also pointed out that since the start of the pandemic, 93 American police officers have died from gunfire, while 473 have died from COVID-19 in the line of duty.
“Look, there is also the key matter of the fact that the police are supposed to be keeping the public safe. That is the point of their jobs, yet some don’t seem to give much of a s— about that,” Oliver said. They demand compliance from the public, but refuse to give even the slightest compliance in return. “So if an officer wants to quit over this, f—ing let them,” he added. “Let the individuals who clearly don’t care about public safety stop being in charge of public safety. It really is that simple.”
The main story on “Last Week Tonight” was about the political situation in Taiwan. That clip is available to watch on YouTube.
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