WATCH: The Daily Show wants to 'stop and frisk' Wall Street bankers

(Image credit: Daily Show)

last updated 8 January 2015

If you're not familiar with the tough-on-crime "stop and frisk" police tactic that's earning New York City special scrutiny from federal courts, The Daily Show's John Oliver has you covered. The policy has long divided New York, Oliver said on Tuesday's show, "with black and Latino residents of this city saying it's an invasion of their liberty and white residents saying: 'Oh, I think I heard a thing about that on NPR. Is that still happening?'"

Police have disproportionately stopped-and-frisked black (52 percent) and Latino (31 percent) New Yorkers over the past eight years, and only 6 percent of the millions of people stopped were even arrested, Oliver pointed out. To put this in perspective for white people and non-New Yorkers, Oliver likened Harlem and other primarily black areas of the city to an aggressive TSA checkpoint at the airport:

You know how we feel at the airport when the TSA is patting us down, unnecessarily delaying us, looking for weapons which we obviously don't have, and we're just trying get to our gate? Well, imagine your whole neighborhood is Terminal B at LaGuardia. And the TSA agents sometimes talk to you like this: "Um, boarding pass, and WHAT THE F--K ARE YOU LOOKING AT? OPEN THAT COMPUTER BAG BEFORE I BREAK YOUR ARM, MOTHERF--KER!"

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.