S03.E24: Police Accountability And Reform

[trow125]

I hope it's OK that I'm starting a topic for tonight's show, because I wanted to bring attention to this important information (via the LWT Twitter feed):

1. The show will start at 11:30 PM tonight
2. It will be running 40 minutes, so adjust your DVRs accordingly.

[Athena]

Quote

Main segement: Police accountability and police reform
Segments: First United States presidential debate, Alicia Machado, Wells Fargo followup

[Primetimer]

Oliver compares shooting investigations to the film 'Dolphin Tale 2', which is actually pretty thought-provoking.

View the full article

[cattykit]

How goddamn refreshing to see a discussion of police shootings that demonizes neither the police nor the citizenry/protestors. 

When you have to offer a class to teach kids how not to get shot, civilization is in ruins.

That's more Chris Matthews than I can normally bear to hear.

40 minutes was good.  They should keep it up, although I could totally have done without the flying dildo boomerang at the end.

[biakbiak]

17 minutes ago, cattykit said:

When you have to offer a class to teach kids how not to get shot, civilization is in ruins.

Especially because what they are being taught doesn't always work. 

[ganesh]

I really don't like when people use the term "bad apples" because as John said, that's not the whole phrase. Also, it's not an argument. "Well, there's some bad apples." Well, get rid of them then. That's your job. 

[vibeology]

This is the sort of thing that makes me so mad because, come on people, police reform is so overdue. It's been overdue since the civil rights movement. How can we disagree on this?

I have a job. I work on a team. I work hard and do things right and I don't have the patience for my coworker who screws things up constantly and relies on everyone else to fix his mistakes. I won't defend his actions and I won't help him cover things up and I'm an administrator. I don't understand why cops are so willing to let the "bad apples" spoil the bunch. Why aren't they the ones pushing for reform? Why aren't they the loudest voices? In their case, those "bad apples" put them at risk when they go out on the street. It's just so infuriating that we've been talking about this for so long and nothing seems to have changed.

[Hanahope]

Seriously.  If you were a fire fighter, would you support a co-worker who did a bad job?  I don't think so.  So why do good cops support bad cops?  

I loved the clip that they found of Trump with Alicia M.  She was so done with Trump.

[peeayebee]

45 minutes ago, ganesh said:

I really don't like when people use the term "bad apples" because as John said, that's not the whole phrase. 

And wasn't "bad apples" used again in the Wells Fargo story? I don't think John commented on that. The phrase is bandied around so much that people don't think about the meaning. TBH, I didn't even think about it until John pointed it out.

There has to be an independent prosecutor who does the grand jury hearings. That's just common sense.

It's incredible that the guy from that Wells Fargo training video is one of the show's writers. 

[dusang]

32 minutes ago, peeayebee said:

It's incredible that the guy from that Wells Fargo training video is one of the show's writers. 

Kevin Avery does the Denzel Washington is the Greatest Actor of All Time Period podcast and he and cohost W. Kamau Bell have frequently discussed the random jobs Kevin had (and was usually fired from) as he worked his way up the comedy ladder.  This is right up there with Jonathan Banks in the sex ed video.

(It is one of my greatest pet peeves that Schwarzenegger doesn't cause a spellcheck error but Denzel does.)

[biakbiak]

Also, the reason they most likely knew about the existence of the video in the first place because Kevin told them about it.

[Victor the Crab]

I started singing the "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" song Jon did on his first TDS show after coming back from filming his movie, everytime they kept showing a newscaster attempting to say a famous movie line. ESPECIALLY when there was a segment of Chris Matthews doing it!

Loved Kevin Avery doing an update on his Wells Fargo training video. Amazing they found the exact type of clothing for him to wear for that.

[OneWhoLurks]

Quote

 

Unscientific online polls have become a headache for some real pollsters.

Many real pollsters say Trump's insistence on the legitimacy of online polls has made pollsters themselves a target for some angry Trump supporters.

"People are calling and emailing us saying it's unfair we had this poll and they didn't get to vote," Tom Jensen, the president of Public Policy Polling, told Business Insider. "It's blurring the line between real polling and fake polling. We've never had this happen until this election cycle."

 

John Oliver mocks Donald Trump and Sean Hannity for citing unscientific 'bogus polls'

[atomationage]

JO did a good job of interjecting a little bit of humour into the serious subject. 

I'm glad they went back to Stumpf of Wells Fargo too, with a brace on his arm from " shoving stolen money up his ass".

[purist]

Did Ollie say that the USA has over 17,000 police agencies? As an Australian, I can't get my head around this. We have federal and state police, and that's it. How does America even function??

I looked up 'Law enforcement in the United States' on Wikipedia, and the Contents list starts with this: 1. Types of police / 1.1 Federal / 1.2 State / 1.3 County - 1.3.1 County police 1.3.2 Sheriffs' offices / 1.4 Municipal / 1.5 Other.

Oy vey. What a mess.

Edited October 4, 2016 by purist

[fastiller]

@purist - there's a small area near where I live - I'd say it's about 3 square miles or so, right at the border between NYC (Queens County) and Nassau County - where a person can interact with: NYPD; Nassau County PD; Town Police; Incorporated Village Police, and for good measure: NYS Police (the last would be very odd, but strictly speaking there's jurisdiction).

[dusang]

13 hours ago, Victor the Crab said:

Loved Kevin Avery doing an update on his Wells Fargo training video. Amazing they found the exact type of clothing for him to wear for that.

On Twitter he said he did actually have the original suit in his closet.  Although, it might have been his suit to begin -- I'm not sure how wardrobe works for videos like that.

[Athena]

1 hour ago, dusang said:

On Twitter he said he did actually have the original suit in his closet.  Although, it might have been his suit to begin -- I'm not sure how wardrobe works for videos like that.

It depends on the production company. Considering how low budget these kind of training videos are and how he only needed to be business casual, they probably asked him to wear what he had. Still funny though.

[Sharpie66]

9 hours ago, purist said:

Did Ollie say that the USA has over 17,000 police agencies? As an Australian, I can't get my head around this. We have federal and state police, and that's it. How does America even function??

I looked up 'Law enforcement in the United States' on Wikipedia, and the Contents list starts with this: 1. Types of police / 1.1 Federal / 1.2 State / 1.3 County - 1.3.1 County police 1.3.2 Sheriffs' offices / 1.4 Municipal / 1.5 Other.

Oy vey. What a mess.

And that doesn't even count the private security personnel in places like schools and malls. The "Other" includes park district police, public housing police, etc.

[attica]

11 hours ago, purist said:

As an Australian, I can't get my head around this. We have federal and state police, and that's it. How does America even function??

Even though the continental US land mass is equivalent to that of Australia, we have over 10 times the population (316mm to your 26mm). Mo' people, mo' po-po.

[mojoween]

I couldn't handle the class about how to interact with cops because that one girls paper said "Officer I have no idea what you are talking about" because cynical me feels like that would often times be the exact wrong thing to say. 

I have always said "one bad apple spoils the bunch" but I imagine that's a colloquialism.

[wknt3]

19 hours ago, purist said:

Did Ollie say that the USA has over 17,000 police agencies? As an Australian, I can't get my head around this. We have federal and state police, and that's it. How does America even function??

I looked up 'Law enforcement in the United States' on Wikipedia, and the Contents list starts with this: 1. Types of police / 1.1 Federal / 1.2 State / 1.3 County - 1.3.1 County police 1.3.2 Sheriffs' offices / 1.4 Municipal / 1.5 Other.

Oy vey. What a mess.

8 hours ago, attica said:

Even though the continental US land mass is equivalent to that of Australia, we have over 10 times the population (316mm to your 26mm). Mo' people, mo' po-po.

It's probably more a matter of history than population. There has always been a tendency to resist any sort of centralization of law enforcement as tyranny, the system developed earlier so the smaller specialized agencies are more deeply rooted (just as in the UK which is far more open to consolidation and annexation than the US) etc. etc. The US and Australia are each crazy in their own special way...

13 hours ago, fastiller said:

@purist - there's a small area near where I live - I'd say it's about 3 square miles or so, right at the border between NYC (Queens County) and Nassau County - where a person can interact with: NYPD; Nassau County PD; Town Police; Incorporated Village Police, and for good measure: NYS Police (the last would be very odd, but strictly speaking there's jurisdiction).

It should be noted that NY is particularly bad for having multiple agencies and overlapping jurisdictions in all sorts of areas of governance due to a variety of historical factors pretty much boiling down to some of John's running themes of "issues can be very important but boring, people protecting their parochial self interest put a lot of pressure on politicians while the rest of us can't be bothered to care, and fear mongering trumps rational analysis any day.

[purist]

12 hours ago, attica said:

Mo' people, mo' po-po.

True dat - but the sheer number of agencies is bewildering to an outsider such as myself.

3 hours ago, wknt3 said:

It's probably more a matter of history than population. There has always been a tendency to resist any sort of centralization of law enforcement as tyranny

That, too.

[OneWhoLurks]

And I've actually lived in an area where no police had jurisdiction - which backfired when a gang drove their victim all the way out there before killing him.

[attica]

14 hours ago, mojoween said:

I have always said "one bad apple spoils the bunch" but I imagine that's a colloquialism.

...Aaaaand now I have the stupid Donny Osmond earworm refuting your version: "One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch, girl/I don't care what they say/I don't care what you've heard!"

[stillshimpy]

Quote

 

When you have to offer a class to teach kids how not to get shot, civilization is in ruins.

In our household the evening started out thusly: 

My husband: Would you like a glass of wine?

Me: ...eh....no.  I skipped working out today, thanks. 

*footage of said class airs* 

I hit pause and got a glass of wine because....behold.  This is probably not the time to give up vices in pursuit of longevity. 

Edited October 6, 2016 by stillshimpy

[OneWhoLurks]

Quote

 

In my 25-part series on how we actually solve the crisis of brutality, Solution #4 was for the bad apples to be fired. This just isn’t happening in any meaningful way. In essence, conservatives want to publicly acknowledge, with a rhetorical flourish, that bad apples are a problem, but not actually do anything about them. They leave them in the barrel — by the thousands.

On Thursday, I profiled two Chicago police officers who were involved in the sodomy a young man with a screwdriver and were found guilty by multiple judges and courts. Twelve years later, they are still cops in the same damn department. These men aren’t simply bad apples — they are an atomic bomb of ugliness. They should be in prison right now. They should’ve been fired immediately. Keeping them on the force, in spite of overwhelming evidence, not only taught those two men, Scott Korhonen and Gerald Lodwich, that they could get away with virtually anything. That lesson was taught to the entire department.

I’m willing to accept the bad apple metaphor, but I must admit that it increasingly appears like American conservatives love bad apples. They fight for them tooth and nail. The only thing I can reasonably conclude is that the presence of so many bad apples isn’t an accident, it’s a strategy.

 

KING: Conservatives admit police departments have a few bad apples, but strangely don’t seem to want to get rid of them

[OneWhoLurks]

Quote

 

NEW YORK – Embattled Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf will retire effective immediately, the company announced Wednesday, marking a stunning downfall for one of the banking industry’s most powerful figures.

The Wells Fargo boss is out in the wake of a national uproar that erupted after regulators accused the bank of creating more than two million fake bank and credit card accounts. The company admitted to firing 5,300 workers over several years.

 

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf steps down amid fake accounts scandal