What follows are a few ideas on how the current police problems in America can be solved.
Step 1: Legalize drugs. Not just marijuana but all drugs should be legalized, doing so would bankrupt cartels, and remove the need for the entire DEA. Addiction could then be viewed as a health crises rather than a legal one and steps could be made to help people rather than simply imprisoning them. (Bankrupting cartels would reduce more than drug related issues. Cartels are involved in human rights violations like human trafficking as well as minor crimes like counterfeiting. It would also help bring rule of law to areas now under control of cartels.)
Step 2: Train police properly. Police are terribly under trained, while at the same being trained in a military mindset. Law enforcement training should focus on how to deal with the public, while remembering police are public servants. Police should be taught first and foremost how to defuse a situation, secondly how to use less-than-lethal techniques, and lastly (and this should be drilled in their head as a last resort) how to remove a threat with lethal force. Furthermore, all officers should have training in basic first aid, enough to handle most anything long enough for EMT to arrive on scene.
Step 3: Require all police to be properly armed. All police must be armed only with what is necessary. There may be times when a SWAT team is needed, but SWAT should never patrol, and the officers who do patrol must never be armed with Special Weapons. All officers must also have less-than-lethal equipment like a Taser. No officer may at any time for any reason, conceal his face or badge number whilst on duty or responding to an emergency whilst off duty.
Step 4: Pay. Police should receive a fair enough pay that the risk of them being bribed is lowered. Many police are paid so little they can get various forms of financial aid.
Step 5: Testing. Police should have to undergo random drug tests, psychological exams, and legal exams to ensure they are operating at peak efficiency, are at no threat of a psychological break, and have maintained knowledge of the law.
Step 6: Decriminalize everything which is not a crime. A crime requires a victim, if there is no victim then the law becomes victimizing, making victims out of those who broke laws which protect no one.
Step 7: Hold police accountable. This is very straightforward, in theory, in practice not so much. By the nature of their jobs cops will want to have each other’s backs and will of course know the DA as well. There are a few different possible ways to solve this. One way could be a restructuring of IA so they are constantly working. Another solution could be removing the DA from the equation and selecting a random defense attorney (the bane of police) to prosecute police when required. Of course I fully support forcing all police to wear a body camera which would live stream to a data base with public access. If anything happens to the camera or video, that alone should stand as evidence of the officers wrong doing.
Step 8: Remove “for profit” prisons. Prisons should make absolutely nobody money, or else putting people in prison becomes big business.
Extra 1: I have heard calls for having no police patrols at all, keeping them at the department until needed but I have some problems with that. Even though the number of crimes stopped by a cop just happening to be in the right place at the right time is low, having police all in one known location will embolden criminals. This would also allow criminals to time an exact rather than average response and plan accordingly. Traffic violations, while most are BS, would be next to impossible to catch.
Extra 2: This ties into my proposed changes for the education system as well as step 6 above. All students must be taught the laws of the nation, province/state, and locality. This will of course prevent people from being punished for things they did not know were against the law.