For years we fought to get a civilian complaint review board, a civilian group to oversee police brutality, what we got was a police review board of civilian complaints, and the number of complaints quickly dropped as the complainants saw that most of the work of the review board's cops was to cover up the evidence of brutality. So, rather than being a snot nosed know it all, I was involved from the inside in seeing the brutality and lack of results. This nation called Cuba a police state, citing as evidence nine cases of police brutality. In fact, every one of those cases were vigorously prosicuted and the cops got long jail sentences. If we had a week with only nine cases of brutality by cops in New York, I would be surprised.
Anyone who thinks this is the paranoia of a life long agitator, well, at present the federal government is moved to place federal oversight over the NYC cops for their record of brutality. The city government is fighting to keep that from happening. As to the fed's record on brutality, see the post about Anna May (Mae) Aguash.
Now, fact is, cops do hard and thankless work, however, like any one else, without proper oversight, we all do less than adiquate work. When the job discription includes leathal force, I think we need a damn well better job of oversight than is currently being excersied. Well, maybe another day we can get into the institution of testilying - false evidence by cops, which I have also seen far too much of.
All the best
Larry