Police Accountability: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

[Music] the police who as these Montana cops show frequently have to deal with humanity at its worst what's the first amendment what's the first name Dan right we're at it what's the first amendment you don't even know ah Constitution yeah yeah Constitution absolutely read it and live by it let's have a seat in the back of the car let us see Ron Paul 2012 and he's as perfect it's it's not like he needed to say Ron Paul 2012 that was implicit in everything he said up to that point but it's certainly nice to have it confirmed now as you know the police have been at the center of a great deal of controversy lately it's been impossible to escape from the black lives matter movement to Colin Kaepernick's protest to mary j blige awkwardly singing a Springsteen song at Hillary Clinton is it a gun is it a nice is it or wallet this is your life you can hear kill just living in your American skin oh hello me thank you Oh God Oh God Hilary would have won my undying respect if she just looked mary j blige straight in the face and said I support your message but that was awkward as and I wish you hadn't done it that would have been honest now now the trust between police and the communities they serve is clearly a cornerstone of civilized society unfortunately that Trust has been rocked following a series of controversial police shootings from Elton Sterling to Philander Casteel to Tamir rice to so many others I literally cannot mention them all and cumulatively these deaths taken with countless smaller incidents of police misconduct have led to a common refrain listen I just want the police to be held accountable we just want the system of policing to be held accountable those police need to be held accountable the same way that you gonna hold me accountable if I broke the law whenever they mess up whenever they commit a crime whenever something goes wrong I'm too much serious stuff like murder and whatnot these guys never get prosecuted now those are valid frustrations although as a quick sidenote murder and whatnot would be an amazing CSI spin-off that's a watchable show right there so police accountability is what we're going to be talking about tonight and before we go any further I should say as the police will tell you they have a difficult dangerous challenging job no reasonable person would disagree with that but that's all the more reason for ensuring that it's done to the highest standard a cake decorator has a challenging job but the worst thing that happens if he up is you end up wishing someone a happy anniversary and yeah well that's obviously not ideal who knows maybe it's their anal versary too the police will also argue that what they have is less an institutional problem than it is an individual one there's been some bad apples out there I think that but I don't think that that is indicative of the entire police department yeah you got bad apples but you got bad apples and every occupation just like any business you're gonna have some bad apples they're out to protect you and that's what policing is about are there bad apples yeah okay that is a weirdly blasé attitude because bad apples can erode trust fast Snow White wasn't afraid of apples before she took a bite out of that one really bad one but I'm telling you the next time an old lady comes out there with a piece of fruit snow is gonna get the can up there and that argument it's just a few bad apples has some real problems for a start it doesn't address bad laws and policies that good officers are made to enforce which we've touched on multiple times before criminal justice is kind of our show's signature bit it is to us what assessing the shape of your poop is to dr. oz also you can't claim there's just a few bad apples when no one knows exactly how many there are there are nearly 18,000 different police departments in America and they are not great about reporting or sharing data in fact even some surprisingly basic questions are hard to answer as the head of the FBI admits we can't have an informed discussion because we don't have data people have data about who went to a movie last weekend or how many books were sold or how many cases of the flu walked into an emergency room and I cannot tell you how many people were shot by police in the United States last month last year or anything about the demographics how is that possible we have numbers for almost everything we have ratings for how many people watched Jeremy Piven in mr. selfridge the government even tracks how many people are killed by falling TVs each year a number surely inflated by people who are watching mr. Selfridge and said I choose death and then pull the down on top of it in fact the best numbers on police misconduct come from a researcher named Philip Stinson who accumulated over a decade's worth of data by setting up 48 google alerts in 2005 Google Alerts and his stats are truly chilling out of thousands of fatal police shooting since 2005 only 77 officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter and to date only 26 have been convicted and while the truth is many police shootings are justified 26 seems suspiciously low so how can that be the number well broadly speaking most investigations of police misconduct faced a few obstacles and the first one is big misconduct is often investigated internally by officers colleagues which does not inspire confidence although if you listen to the police chief in Bakersville California the system is just fine you're absolutely confident that structure of review is entirely impartial I am I these guys are experts in the field they reported ahamed they're investigating they have hundreds of years of law enforcement experience combined and so I have the utmost confidence in these individuals here's the thing their combined experience is not a thing that automatically makes you do a better job our staff has a combined 347 years in television and that doesn't mean we won't just throw off load of raisins on a desk and call it entertainment and and and unsurprisingly the DOJ has consistently found flaws with internal investigations in Cleveland investigators admitted they intentionally cast an officer in the best light possible when investigating a use of deadly force and in Miami investigations took so long that at least two officers shot and killed a suspect while still under investigation for a previous shooting and there should never be a second one of anything before you figure out whether the first was justified call it the Dolphin Tale to rule how is there a second one of these I thought Harry Connick jr. ate the dolphin at the end of the first one I don't know for sure I haven't seen it but no one has and that's the point and in Baltimore the DOJ report included the story of Joe crystal a detective who had reported to fellow officers for alleged excessive force and was labeled a rat with one colleague leaving pictures of cheese on his desk which is almost charming until you learn how far some others went he found himself cut off he says he didn't get back up in dangerous situations someone even left a dead rat and his windshield was like their way of telling me you know you don't belong here this is what we think of you ouch leaving a dead rat on an officer's windshield is definitely hostile unless of course that officer is a police cat in which case it means welcome to the force whiskers we're lucky to have you enjoy the rat but police accountability doesn't just suffer from an unwritten code of silence that code can be enshrined within state laws or union contracts as well for instance one reason it can be hard to spot problem officers is that in many jurisdictions policies allow disciplinary records to be destroyed in Baton Rouge a sustained complaints can be stricken from your record after just 18 months and in Mesa Arizona when a journalist started demanding records a police chief actually made an internal video reminding his officers that there was a way for them to clean up their past I don't want anybody have to relive a problem that's already been adjudicated that they've already been disciplined for that has already seen the scrutiny in the public eye so perjure files according to policy make sure that there's that the things that you don't want in there aren't in there that seems wrong you should not be able to erase parts of your past that are damning this is an official police file not like Volkswagen corporate history that somehow starts after World War two yeah Nazi cars the choice of the Nazis and deleting records is not an officer's only option to escape their past sometimes after an incident they'll simply resign and move to another Police Department this happened so much people in law enforcement called them gypsy cops in South Carolina TV station looked into one officer who spent a total of nine years on the job working for nine different departments three of them in just one year and in one case he left in spectacular fashion deputies believe Yarborough's driving ability was compromised and they said they discovered a half-empty bottle of rye whiskey and a baggie of assorted pills in his patrol cruiser according to the state records Yarborough said I'm not taking no drug test I guess I'll resign holy I'm not taking no drug test I guess I'll resign is a sentence you do not want to hear from a police officer it's barely appropriate coming from a roadie leaving Aerosmith and gypsy cops have been involved in tragic incidents in the Tamir rice case the officer who shot the twelve-year-old had been in the process of being fired from his previous job before resigning but the Cleveland Police missed that red flag when hiring him because they didn't read his personnel file which detailed an incident during weapons training where he had a dangerous loss of composure leading his supervisor to conclude I do not believe time nor training will be able to change or correct these deficiencies that is the kind of performance review that should keep you from getting hired at Staples let alone a job where you're given a f--king gun that cop by the way was never even charged like many such cases his never made it past the grand jury which seems inherently surprising until you realize local prosecutors and cops have to work together all the time which can get very complicated as a former prosecutor I can tell you you work with the police you rely upon the police you trust the police the police are in your office reviewing evidence examining evidence preparing for trial and then have to turn around and prosecute them to prosecute you exactly for a prosecutor to go after a cop they work with is incredibly awkward I can't think of anything more inherently awkward other than of course this oh thank you oh god oh god it's not getting any better nothing in Hillary's life has ever been more awkward than that and think about what a high bar that is an even when cases go to trial officers have a major advantage which is that juries tend to have a natural predisposition to trust them police officers truly get a presumption of innocence whereas most criminal defendants don't come in with any presumption of innocence you're swimming upstream usually a judge will toss the case at a preliminary hearing or a grand jury will refused to indict so you never even get the trial and jurors just do not come in with any belief whatsoever that officers can commit a crime they just don't it's true many people see a police uniform and automatically think trustworthy unless of course it includes a sleeveless shirt and a boom box in which case they think stripper and sometimes weight gym from middle school and under under the law the police generally have a certain amount of leeway regarding lethal force meaning that fatal shootings can be considered legal even if they are unnecessary or disproportional there is even a shorthand for such cases it's lawful but awful which I believe is also the legal definition of Woody Allen's marriage I think that's it who are you angry with here put the booze back in your pockets and on top of all this officers can bring in expert witnesses who can present nearly any situation as a potential threats take dr. bill Nowinski who runs something called the force Science Institute for years he has testified on behalf of police officers here he is providing a rationale for why it may be okay to shoot someone that has a knife knives can actually be more dangerous than a gun they don't have to be reloaded they can be used at close distance we know that a stab from a knife or stab or a cut can be extremely quick hey come on that is not the motion you make when you are stabbing someone that is the motion you make when you are a teenager magician finishing a trick is this your card but but there is no doubt there is no doubt a knife is a dangerous weapon but what if someone doesn't have a knife dr. Lewinsky could force still be necessary when someone is unarmed first of all it's significant to know that unarmed doesn't mean they're not dangerous in fact a fist may have been the very first weapon that human beings used against each other I measured strikes on human beings by other humans and the strikes can occur at a speed of four or five or six strikes in a second and some of them really hard what is he talking about the only type of fist is a match for a weapon is during a game of rock-paper-scissors and even then it can be defeated by paper with four reasons which make no sense to me whatsoever but that's not the point look look defendants are allowed to call expert witnesses of course what is weird is lewinsky has appeared before grand juries which is where prosecutors are supposed to present their best unchallenged case for an officer's indictment so why would they let Lewinsky in there they're essentially shooting their own case in the foot which is presumably justified because feet were the second weapon ever invented unless we've we focused heavily on trials here but in a perfect world there would be enough accountability throughout policing that the blunt instrument of a trial would very rarely be necessary so how can we fix all this well for starting a body cameras have increased transparency and Trust in many places in Rialto California after just one year of using them the number of complaints filed against officers fell by 88% and the use of force drops by around 60% and when Baltimore's trial run of a body camera program ended their Police Commissioner begged for their return police officers want cameras I think this is just a moment where everybody wants cameras I was speaking to some folks just before we came in here and apparently we had a couple police officers who were turning in their body worn cameras and they were asking you know when can i when can we get these back right and these cops aren't M night Shyamalan if they plead with you to let them have a camera again you should give it to them give it to them and body cameras are obviously just one solution other cities have tried requiring officers to file separate reports every time there's a use of force or they've used early intervention systems to try and spot problem officers or they brought in outside prosecutors to handle controversial cases the problem is police unions fiercely fight any attempted reforms just listen to James Stewart head of the biggest police union in Newark where the DOJ found that three-quarters of police stops had no legal justification to listen to him if anything the police are being too scrutinized I don't know where the problem started but there is an animosity or a lack of trust you know as soon as there's any sort of physical force exerted by a police officer everybody's got their cell phones out you know they want to catch us doing something wrong when you got the cop out there in the street facing all this negative opposition day in and day out does it come a point when the police officer is gonna say hey you know what maybe he doesn't have to go to jail yeah maybe I'll take the path of least resistance maybe I'll put the blinders on as I'm driving by the corner where the ten guys are hanging out okay yeah there is a lot to unpack there first throwing a ten and threatening not to do your job because you face public criticism is pretty childish you think Steven Seagal gave up on his movie career just because people said mean things of course not just this year he starred in end of a gun the perfect weapon the Asian connection code of honor and sniper special ops why cuz he's a king professional that's why and he commits to his job but but but more importantly when you say you might ignore 10 people hanging out on a corner yeah maybe do that because that's not typically a crime in in some cases 10 people on a corner is just a king yardsale still for many people Stuart's argument that you know for police to be effective they need to be given broad leeway to use force is very appealing it's especially appealing for those of us who for whatever reason are fairly confident that that force won't be applied to them but it is worth looking at the actual cost of that trade-off because a lack of trust in police accountability leads to a lack of trust in police and we now have reached the point where there are schools who host classes like this one to teach kids how to safely interact with law enforcement I want you to repeat after me I want you to say officer am I free to go one more time officer Oh am I free to go the hope is with this simple advice teens can protect their rights and maybe their lives that is so depressing especially when you realize that's probably the only class where nobody will raise their hand and say when are we ever going to use this and when you see something like that it makes it hard to buy in when someone dismisses police misconduct issues like this they're out to protect you and that's what policing is about our abed apples here yeah but here's the thing about that the phrase isn't it's just a few bad apples don't worry about it the phrase is a few bad apples spoil the barrel and we currently have a system which is set up to ignore bad apples destroy bad apples records persecute good apples for speaking up and show all dangerous emotionally unstable apples around to the point that children have to attend key Apple classes you cannot look at our current situation and claim that anybody likes them apples

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 16,367,118

Keywords: last week tonight with john oliver, last week tongiht, john oliver, police accountability, john oliver police

Id: zaD84DTGULo

Length: 19min 54sec (1194 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 02 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Brain13]

That Mary J. Blidge thing was incredibly awkward. My god.

[u/HugeEgo_Sorry]

That is so fucking depressing, especially when you realise that's probably the only class where nobody will raise their hand and say 'when are we ever to going use this?'

Holy shit that's heavy.

[u/gatorfan45]

You know I'm always amazed at the things that I don't know about these kinds of subjects.

[u/BoogsterSU2]

I guess body cameras are one way to help us trust the police more.

[u/PrecariouslySane]

I had no idea about Gypsy cops. How the fuck is that allowed?

[u/L4ddy]

"These cops aren't M. Night Shyamalan; if they plead with you to let them have a camera again, you should give it to them!"

[u/Human_Robot]

That gypsy cops bullshit sounds like the same sort of policy the Catholic Church took with pedophile priests.

[u/[deleted]]

I love how the police have the same mentality of "rats" and "snitches" as the people they villainize.

[u/Cabber]

It continues to blow my mind how little accountability police have. My family is full of nurses and its amazing how much accountability/record keeping they have to go through to ensure they aren't liable for anything. A nurse can't just become a "gypse nurse" and transfer if she over doses or miss critical meds on a patient.