John Oliver argues for defunding police

Entertainment Weekly

Last Week Tonight devoted Sunday's extended episode entirely to the issue of police brutality amid the George Floyd protests. At the end Oliver touched on the "Defund the Police" movement, which he says has been misrepresented on TV. "Defunding the police absolutely doesn't mean we eliminate all cops and succumb to The Purge," Oliver said. "Instead, it's about moving away from a narrow conception of public safety that relies on policing and punishment and investing in a community's actual safety net — things like stable housing, mental health services, and community organization. The concept is the role of the police can significantly shrink because they're not responding to the homeless, or to mental health calls, or arresting children in schools, or other situations where the best solution isn't someone showing up with a gun. This clearly isn't about individual officers, it's about a structure built on systemic racism, that this country created intentionally and now needs to dismantle intentionally and replace with one that takes into account the needs of the people it actually serves and this is going to take sustained pressure and attention over a long period of time from all of us."