President Obama talks Ferguson on Jimmy Kimmel Live, says there's 'no excuse for criminal acts'

(Image credit: Facebook.com/JimmyKimmelLive)

last updated 13 March 2015

During his Thursday night appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, President Obama said there is "no excuse for criminal acts" in Ferguson, Missouri, and that he wants to see law enforcement and protesters work together following the shooting of two police officers.

"Whoever fired those shots shouldn't detract from the issue," he said. "They're criminals. They need to be arrested." Later, he added, "What we have to make sure of is that the folks who disregard and disrespect the other side, people who resort to violence — that they're marginalized." He reminded people that "in the same way that you can't generalize about police officers who do an extraordinarily tough job — overwhelmingly, they do it professionally — you can't generalize about protesters who it turns out had some very legitimate grievances."

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You had city government telling the police department... 'Stop more people. We need to raise more money.' Folks would get stopped. They'd get tickets. Then, they'd have to wait in line to pay it, take a day off work. Folks would lose their jobs. In some cases, they were thrown in jail because they didn't have enough money for the fines. And then they'd get fined for that. So there was a whole structure there, according to the Justice Department report, that indicated both racism and just a disregard for what law enforcement's supposed to do. [Obama]

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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