John Oliver exposes the inadequacies of school police in wake of Uvalde, Texas shooting

While Second Amendment advocates suggest a litany of non-reformist solutions to school shootings in the aftermath of the deadly massacre in Uvalde, Texas—including metal detectors, a limited number of entry points, hanging ballistics blankets on classroom walls and prayer—the most common refrain is simply calling for more guns, specifically in the hands of school resource officers (SROs) and teachers. 

Turns out that might be creating more problems, not fewer—a point that John Oliver pointed out during the main story of HBO’s Last Week Tonight on Sunday. 

During his report, Oliver pointed out that while $750 million was spent hiring SROs in the years immediately following the 1999 Columbine shooting, only 58 percent of schools now have SROs. The cost and effort involved in instituting these officers have effectively stopped two active shooters in the ensuing 23 years, Oliver notes.

Meanwhile, a report by the ACLU found that while we’re using millions of dollars in school resources to hire more and more campus police, 14 million kids in the U.S. go to school without access to a school counselor, nurse, psychologist—putting them in “closer proximity to a pair of handcuffs” than to more often needed medical or mental health professional. 

“The answer to the question, ‘Do police in schools deter school shootings?’ is basically no,” Oliver explained. “Experts who’ve studied this have found that school shooters were not deterred due to the presence of metal detectors, locked doors, security cameras or school resource officers,” adding that both Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. and Robb Elementary in Uvalde—which combined total 38 deaths—both had SROs on site. 

“What’s remarkable is that when you have armed officers on the scene, you actually see more casualties,” Jillian Peterson, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at Hamline University in Minnesota, told CNN during a clip included in the package. She goes on to suggest that when they know SROs are at a school, shooters arrive more heavily armed.