John Oliver is against more police officers in schools after the Texas shooting

After a short segment honoring Queen Andrew and Platinum UK honoring Queen Elizabeth II, John Oliver entered his main segment on Sunday night. last week tonightApproving increased gun control measures following a school shooting in Walton, Texas, last month.

Noting that the National Firearms Association held a conference in Texas three days after the tragedy, Oliver showed a clip of NRA chief Wayne Lapierre discussing the full funding of US police departments as well as the school safety resources.

“It’s no surprise that the NRA CEO’s solution is more people with guns,” Oliver said. “It would be the same to hear ‘the trash is gone, so we need more trash’ from the head of the National Raccoon Association, I mean, what do you expect from that?

In the six years since the 1999 Columbine school shooting, the federal government has committed $750 million, leading to the hiring of more than 6,500 school resource officers. However, Oliver noted that since then, data shows that 58% of US schools have a sworn officer on campus at least once a week, while other resources have dwindled. Oliver cited another study showing that 14 million students attend schools that have a police officer but no counselor, nurse, psychologist or social worker.

“That’s 14 million children who are closer to their wives than they are to a medical or mental health professional,” he said.

Oliver went on to investigate whether police presence at the school actually prevents school shootings, which it doesn’t, citing a 2020 study showing that shooters weren’t stopped by police, security cameras, metal detectors or closed doors. I also say that having a police officer on the campus tampoco means that the shootings will not be stopped, because in 2018, in the place of the shooting, in the schools of Wawald and Parkland, where the shooting took place in 2018, the officers were present in the school. According to an analysis by the Washington Post, there have only been two cases in two decades where a school marshal was able to take down an active shooter. He showed a video in which an expert argued that the presence of the police actually makes the shooter more dangerous because they come heavily armed and know that the police were already at the school.

“If school cops can make shootings worse, why bother?” Oliver asked. “Yes, it’s off! “They found that their mosquito repellent would attract mosquitoes, they would stop selling it or at least turn it into a singles colony of mosquitoes.”

Oliver went on to see how the mere presence of police officers on campus would affect students, noting that in some schools police officers also serve as mentors and other roles, but in vulnerable schools this is not the case. There they are more involved in law enforcement activities.

In the 2017-18 school year, more than 54,000 people were arrested by school officials for offenses such as throwing a paper plane, carrot or skewer. Outraged, Oliver also pointed out that a 5-year-old boy with ADHD suffering a stroke was accused of assault by a police officer, “when apparently the only culprit was a 5-year-old boy,” Oliver said. .

He also showed a clip of a high school student explaining that he had been arrested for conducting a science experiment to defuse “bombs and explosives”, in which a plastic bottle flew out of its cap. “It’s silly for many reasons. One is that when you hear “crime by scientific experimentation” you think you’re thinking metics. If I gave you 500 guesses as to which science experiment someone was accused of committing a crime, your first 499 guesses would be “more” and your next guesses would be “Are you 100% sure this is not thorough?” “You wouldn’t have ‘take the cap off the bottle’ in your wildest dreams if there wasn’t meth in that bottle.”

And in some cases, these arrests will give children a criminal record.

In addition, Oliver cited studies showing that students with disabilities and children of color are more likely to be incarcerated, which is disproportionate to their share of enrollment. “Having the police can make school worse for some kids,” Oliver said. “And honestly, we don’t need more ways to make school worse. That’s scary enough. “I’m asking what are the scariest places I can imagine, this isn’t a nursing home or inside Tom Cruise’s brain, this is high school because you remember it was me,” he said, pointing to a photo he had. had used it previously. . . in marketing campaigns. He’s in high school with glasses and acne.

Oliver argued that the money was “inevitably” used to fund school police and would instead be used for counselors, nurses and “other resources that really protect students”.

“School police are not responsible for school shootings; “The answer is gun control,” added Oliver. “When we bring more police officers into schools as a way out of this difficult and necessary conversation, we not only fail to protect our children from gun violence, but we condemn them in a system that blames the very fabric of childhood. Children deserve to be irritated non-stop, to be sad and angry without getting hit on the body. They deserve to suffer, toss carrots, do scientific experiments, talk nonsense and have their names cut without the risk of being left behind by a patrol car. Curiosity, bugs, driving a little, being a little noisy, especially a depraved child, deserves it. “And they really deserve more than a fundamental lie. The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy who can arrest a 5 year old.”