I've been saying this for a while

A lot of cops can be shitbird bullies unfit to wear the badge, and it doesn't matter what skin color their victim has.

But whenever it comes up I often get dragged by cop-fans.  Not the kinda dragging the rioters do.  Polite comment disagreement.

Solution, for me, all this time has been to hamstring the public sector unions.  They wield too much power.  But that solution is, like most, too simple, direct, plausible  - and wrong.  Well, wrong-ish. Good ol' Mencken.  Can always count on the sage of Baltimore until he got too old and bitter in the 30s.

Anyway.  Yes, the union and big blue wall is a bad thing, and qualified immunity they back to the hilt is easily abused too.  But take them things away you get new problems.  If you kill off the public union then public/politic management has to have the cops' backs.  SOMEBODY has to back stop them, or they'll get eaten alive.  And I'd not trust a politician to do that.  The only thing worse than a crooked cop is any politician that thinks you stand in his way at the ballot box.  And they'll throw bad cops and good cops and victimized constituency over the transom in a trice if they threaten the pols phoney-baloney job. 

So, my distaste for abusive cops is tempered by my greater distaste for the political class above them. What's that... a dirty cop is still acting like a good guy 80% of the time? Maybe. I dunno. But a good pol is only good, what? 50%? Servants indeed.