In Last Week Tonight, John Oliver dissected police raids. Via Rolling Stone:
In the segment — which began with a very worthwhile, if unrelated, digression into the short-lived TV musical Cop Rock — Oliver traced the rise of police raids back to the War on Drugs and highlighted reports that showed how they are still predominately carried out in black and Latino neighborhoods. Oliver also tied police raids to militarization, with police taking part in over-the-top training exercises that prioritize, say, taking down a cult leader over general conflict de-escalation. And even supposedly “non-lethal” tools like flash bangs can be harmful, especially when a cop manages to throw one into a crib, which happened in a 2014 incident.
“Look, I’m no policeman, I haven’t studied all the bylaws, I don’t have a PhD in ‘grenade-ology,'” Oliver deadpanned. “But purely as a layperson, the police should not have thrown that fucking grenade into a fucking crib. And if the police are truly incapable of knowing whether they’re throwing a grenade into a crib, maybe they shouldn’t have fucking grenades!”
Oliver points out how common it is for police to raid the wrong address -- and of course, thanks to the doctrine of "qualified immunity," they're not held accountable in the least.
