John Oliver Says What Needs To Be Said About Why Defunding The Police Is The Right Thing Right Now

from the watch-this dept

We've posted a bunch of times when John Oliver has said pretty much exactly what we've been saying here at Techdirt, but he always does it much better, more pointedly, and (much, much) funnier than we do. The latest is no exception. It was all about the systemic racism that has created, enabled and encouraged so much police brutality, especially against black communities. Just watch it:

It goes over a ton of things that we've written about in the past, and some stuff we haven't. It talks about the history of policing -- much of which was literally designed as a racist tool to keep black communities down. It covers the ridiculous "drug wars" from the 1970s and 1980s, that we now know were designed explicitly as a tool to target black Americans by Richard Nixon. It mentions the debunked concept of "broken windows policing," that (again) was used specifically to target black Americans by police. Oh, and also the unconstitutional stop and frisk policies used by the NYPD and elsewhere which (stop me if you've heard this one before...) were used by police to target black Americans.

It goes on to talk about how politicians across the political spectrum focused on putting more and more money into police departments, while cutting and slashing all other social services, leaving the police to deal with the fallout. So, when we don't have services for the mentally ill... it falls to the police (who too often step in and shoot the mentally ill rather than help them). We've turned drug addiction from a medical problem (for which many people cannot get medical help) into a criminal problem (again inserting the police).

Then he discusses the insane police militarization that we've been highlighting here for the better part of a decade. The whole setup of a militarized police has never made sense, in part because it literally sets up two things you don't want if you want reasonable policing: (1) the attitude that your town or city is "at war," and (2) the view that the public is "the enemy." Both of these are the exact opposite of what effective policing would be. From there, it covers how police training reinforces these concepts, and has literally nothing to do with protecting the public, but often more to do with making the police feel good about themselves.

There's also a good discussion of just how evil police unions are, and how they seem to focus on protecting the ability of cops to violate everyone's rights with impunity. And that, of course, brings us right to one of the biggest travesties around: the concept of qualified immunity, which is about as close to a literal "get out of jail free" card as there is from almost all police misbehavior. Oliver then goes on to talk about how the federal government could step in, but (especially under this administration) usually chooses to look the other way.

All of this brings Oliver around to the discussion that gained prominence last week about "defunding the police." On social media, I've seen a bunch of people push back on this idea as somehow a bridge too far, but they're wrong, and Oliver makes the point quite clearly why. The issue is not a "few bad cops." It's not that police need better training. The problem is that the entire system is built to reinforce its own problems. Put more simply: the problem right now is not that the system needs reform, it's that it's working as intended. The entire concept of policing in America is broken. And you don't fix that with reform. You need radical change from top to bottom.

And that's what the "defund the police" movement is about. It's about a total rethink of what "policing" means. And, that can include wiping out entire police departments and starting from scratch with a new approach. Oliver mentions Camden, New Jersey, which did exactly that. In 2013 it shut down its police department and started again from scratch. And the results are pretty stunning (though, even there, there are arguments that they could have gone much further and been even more successful).

As Oliver highlights for people who really need to hear it: defunding the police doesn't mean ending any kind of law enforcement. It means completely rethinking the entire structure of terrible policing we've built up over decades (while simultaneously wiping away the other various safety nets and infrastructure that support people in need putting more of that work onto police shoulders, who are ill-equipped, at best, to handle it).

So, please, if you think "defunding" the police, or some of our posts from the last few weeks are going "too far," please watch Oliver. Or watch some of the many other smart people who have been speaking out about this for years.

The problem is not a few bad cops. The problem is the system itself. The system is working as intended, and that is the problem.

Filed Under: black lives matter, defund the police, john oliver, police brutality, police unions, protests, systemic racism