This weekend’s episode of Last Week Tonight briefly introduced the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee before jumping right into the main story. In the light of the horrific shooting that happened at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, the latest episode of John Oliver‘s show focused on the urgent need for stricter gun control laws and poked holes in some arguments that have been raised as alternatives to tightening gun laws, namely the implementation of police officers in schools.
Oliver addresses the measures that have been proposed to combat tragedies such as what happened in Uvalde. However, this latest episode focused chiefly on one of the most common arguments that always seem to emerge in the wake of a shooting like this one: to get more School Resource Officers (SROs) into Schools. This may sound reasonable at first but as Oliver makes clear throughout this half-hour episode, this measure often brings more harm than good.
While there may be a police officer at schools, most of these lack a counselor, nurse, psychologist, or social worker. This means that there are millions of children in the US who are “in closer proximity to a pair of handcuffs than they are to a medical or mental health professional”. This is problematic, especially because having an SRO in schools has actually yielded very negative consequences. For a start, having an officer in schools does not seem to be a major deterrent for school shooters nor have they proven to be effective against active shooters in the majority of cases.
Another argument against SROs in schools is that they often use their authority in damaging ways. SROs have been given the power to arrest students, and they often do so regardless of how innocuous the offense may be. In turn, these arrests put blemishes on the students’ criminal records which can deeply impact them in the long term. The British-American comedian eloquently points out that the problem with SROs is the way in which they are conducting their law enforcement duties, and this ends up impacting Black students and students with disabilities the most.
“The presence of police can make school miserable for some kids,” Oliver states, and as he further points out, school is already scary enough as it is without an officer who enjoys “all the same protections they do everywhere” abusing the power they have. The central problem is in how the whole system is set up and how police officers are trained to act. Small reforms are past the point of being able to work, the host argues, and instead “we could just try to get [SROs] out of schools altogether.”
In this episode, Oliver comprehensively explores how having police at schools proves to be counterproductive and that the money spent on them should go to other school staff like nurses and mental health professionals. Last Week Tonight illustrates with real examples that, at the end of the day, police will not stop shootings at schools, gun control will.
