VIDEO: Trevor Noah blasts Phoenix police for holding Black family at gunpoint at Family Dollar
On Monday, Daily Show host Trevor Noah sounded off on the Phoenix police over the brutal confrontation of a Black family that ended with aiming guns in the face.
Parents Dravon Ames and his pregnant fiancee, Aisha Harper, said they were completely unaware that their 4-year-old daughter had taken a doll from the store, but that officers responded by pointing guns and yelling obscenities at them and their two young daughters. A viral video released on Friday back up their claims and shows the harrowing encounter that has many calling for the officers to be fired.
The family has responded to the incident by filing a $10 million claim against the city accusing the police of battery, unlawful imprisonment, false arrest, and infliction of emotional distress. The couple also maintain cops violated their civil rights.
—Family viciously harassed by officers after 4-year-old leaves discount store with a doll—
“There’s no excuse for this,” host Noah said. “There’s no excuse. Unless maybe the cop says he arrests people in the way that he thinks that they speak. Maybe he’s like, “Yo, Black man, get your ass on the ground. And as for you, ese, you better stop acting like a pendejo. And you, Belgian guy, I don’t know how you speak. Waffles, waffles waffles.”
Noah then turned from stoking laughs from his audience to chastising the police for their brutal handling of the family May 27th.
“I’m sorry, guys, you don’t need to show up like a SWAT team to rescue a Barbie from a little girl,” Noah said, according to AZ Central.
“If anything, you should be rescuing the little girl from the Barbie. You should be getting there like, little girl watch out, that Barbie can give you a warped sense of what a woman’s body is supposed to be!”
“You would think that cops cursing at civilians and pointing guns at a 4-year-old child would be as bad as the story could get,” Noah said. “But what makes it even worse is that if we didn’t have these videos, those cops would have been able to paint a very different picture of how this all went down.”
“You know what’s most troubling about this,” he continued, “is that it makes you wonder how many people have been arrested and put in jail because everyone assumes the police version of events is always the truth. Time and time again, cellphone videos contradict the official reports.’”
Jay-Z’s Roc Nation is stepping up to offer financial support to the young family victimized on May 29.
