John Oliver Looks at Police Violence and Racism, and What Defunding the Police Would Mean

Anybody who’s somehow still wondering how America’s police force has gotten to this point—how the institution that’s supposed to serve and protect us has instead turned into a paramilitary force that too often murders black people and openly brutalizes peaceful protesters—should watch last night’s episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The whole thing’s up on YouTube, and we’ve embedded it below, so there’s no excuse not to check it out.

Oliver tracks how American police forces have always been in support of systemic racism, from their early origins as runaway slave patrols, to their active participation in lynching and other white supremacist violence, to how they’ve historically enforced all manner of racist policies and laws. He also shows how cops have become increasingly militarized over the last 50 years, not just in terms of equipment but in how they’re trained to think and act. And this isn’t a partisan problem, as Oliver points out—Democrats are every bit as guilty of growing and perpetuating this system as Republicans. In fact, early on in the episode Oliver explicitly calls out Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo for their responsibility for the violent response to New York protests, which makes Oliver the only late night host to focus on the local officials who oversee police brutality and to acknowledge that Donald Trump and his administration are not solely responsible for it.