Let's stop saying bad police officers are rare. Fact is they're plentiful from coast to coast.

[DirkGently]

21. Let's stop pretending any of it is about "bad ones" and "good ones."

Problems like these are not a function of weeding out evil people from good people, or deciding whether it's fair to paint an enormous group with one brush.

Concluding that "most" of anybody is good or bad gets us nowhere. We can't get rid of "most cops."

But we can change the culture in which they work, and the incentives and ramifications for doing the job right vs. abusing it.

These issues are group power dynamics over a large scale. The same way people who work on Wall Street don't sit around cackling about screwing the middle class, but manage to do it anyway. Regulate them correctly, and suddenly you're in Canada, where bankers don't gamble taxpayer money and break the world.

Sure, individual proclivities matter, but WE ALL are doing something wrong with the way we conceptualize law and order. We wouldn't be seeing racist or corrupt policing everywhere if we didn't allow the systems that encourage those attitudes to stay in place.

- Independent review. Neither cops nor bankers are good at "policing themselves." Places with community review boards, or at the very least, outside agency review of complaints, typically do better.

- Less militarization. We need to stop sending cops tanks and APCs and fifteen different ways to hurt people that "probably" won't kill them. You prepare constantly for war; you're going to find a war.

- Transparency and accountability. Dash cams, body cams, and better review of all of those things. Policing is a public matter. It should be done where the public can see. The crooked get scared and the tempted think twice.

- Better training and culture within departments. LAPD was infamous for its racism and bunker mentality when Daryl Gates was in charge. It looks like NYPD, Baltimore, Mississippi, and many other departments have them same thing going on. Foot patrols and community policing get cops to see residents as neighbors and friends, instead of an enemy country.

There's no getting rid of the fact that people in power will misuse it if we don't actively prevent it. You take away incentives to do it, and develop better responses for when it happens. You put a better system in place, and suddenly you don't have those barrels full of rotten apples any more.