John Oliver addresses police accountability, and how the problem is bigger than ‘a few bad apples’

On this weekend’s Last Week Tonight, John Oliver tackled police accountability, a particularly topical and sensitive subject given the string of police shootings in America in the last several years that have lead to countless protests and riots, and distrust between police and citizens.

“The trust between police and the communities they serve is clearly a cornerstone of civilized society,” said Oliver, opening the show. “Unfortunately, that trust has been rocked following a series of controversial police shootings from Alton Sterling to Philando Castile to Tamir Rice to so many others — I literally cannot mention them all. And cumulatively, these deaths taken with countless small incidence of police misconduct, have led to a common refrain.”

Oliver then addressed the lack of recorded data on the part of the 18,000 police departments in America. To make up for it, one researcher that Oliver spotlighted has been gathering data for years on police shootings, via Google alerts.

“His stats are truly chilling,” Oliver said. “Out of thousands of fatal police shootings since 2005, only 77 officers have been 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.”

Thanks to certain policies, Oliver explained, disciplinary records can even be destroyed and officers can avoid investigation by resigning and transferring to a different police department. Not to mention the silent code between some officers, ensuring that those who do report on each other end up being ostracized or bullied.

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“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,’” said Oliver. “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 shuffle dangerous, emotionally unstable apples around to the point that children have to attend f—king apple classes! You cannot look at our current situation and claim that anybody likes them apples.”

“Snow White wasn’t afraid of apples before she took a bite out of that one really bad one,” Oliver continued. “But I’m telling you, the next time an old lady comes at her with a piece of fruit, Snow is going to get the f—k out of there.”