October 3, 2016

John Oliver Takes on Police Accountability and “Bad Apples”

Why that argument just makes no sense.


When it comes to police accountability, police departments often try and wave away officer-involved shootings and other misconduct as isolated cases, or “bad apples” that don’t reflect the institution as a whole. On Sunday, John Oliver tore into why that argument makes absolutely no sense: for one, there’s so little data on officer-involved shootings across the country that, as FBI Director James Comey put it, we know more about how many people bought movie tickets last weekend than how many people were killed in a police shooting last year.

Oliver digs even deeper into the lack of transparency in reporting shootings and the flaws in how the Department of Justice investigates officers. Watch it above.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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