A simple democratic tool will give people the basic democratic dignity of getting to choose who polices their communities.
"All cops are bastards." That's not as bad as it sounds, really - lots of people are bastards. Many of my friends are bastards. I can be a bit of a bastard myself.
I'm not, however, a sadistic psychopath. Bastards, sure, but not all cops are sadistic psychopaths, either - but there are thousands of them all over the country. They sit at the very center of America's police oppression problem - the Bully Cops.
When I say the Bully Cop, you all immediately know exactly who I mean. I've met a few in my life, maybe you have too. If you haven't, consider yourself lucky, but you've certainly seen them in any of the shaky cell-phone videos showing the brutal, murderous police violence that we all know familiarly, but never get used to.
They're the particular type of people who are attracted to the job for all of the wrong reasons. They don't want to improve their communities, or serve and the public, or even "catch the bad guys" - they simply enjoy violence, because violence is fun.
It's fun to burn a handcuffed man's skin off on a hot pavement. It's fun to a shoot a big black gun into the belly of a crying man on his knees. It's fun to kneel on a man's neck until he dies. In America, being a cop is the only way to have that kind of fun - and as a bonus, they'll even pay you for it.
The Bully Cop loves buying toys. They love shiny dog tags. They love "tactical" accessories to attach to their service-issued weapons, patches with the Punisher logo on them, tattoos and steroids. If they're good, or even if they're not, maybe the DHS will buy them a tank for Christmas.
In the movies, it's always the popular redneck jock who becomes the Bully Cop, but in reality, it's the opposite. The Bully Cop was a loser in high school - a school shooter in reverse. Bully Cops don't become cops right out of school, they work dead end jobs for a little while first. Like so many of us, it's not until they're a bit older and realize that life is short do they decide it should be spent doing what they love - and what they love is violence, because violence is its own reward.
The Bully Cop is a cancer in any police department. Watch any of the horrific videos of police, and you'll notice the same pattern in every one. The situation - though an unpleasant reminder of the way the police in this country treat the poor, the mentally unstable and the brown - would never have escalated to the level of savage violence that causes masses of people to burn their own cities if it weren't for a single Bully Cop at the center of it all. Cops all have a code - they protect their own, no matter what. Even if they wouldn't have killed a man in handcuffs themselves, their code forces them to participate in the joyful violence of the Bully Cop. That's what makes them bastards.
So, what are we to do about the Bully Cop? I don't believe in the possibility of fixing systems from the inside, and I'm not naive enough to think that we can ever try to break down the blue wall of silence.
Instead, I propose a simple solution: give the people a Bully Cop Veto. A simple ballot referendum at the city level will give people the power to force the severance of a Bully Cop's contract. Five hundred signatures, a vote, and they're out. Getting the signatures won't be hard - ask your friends in the 'hood, and they'll all already know their local Bully Cop by name. He's the cop who makes all the other worse. Police unions - the vilest of propagandists - will whinge and moan, but there's no other way that I can see to give people the basic democratic dignity of getting to choose who polices their communities.
If you're in any position of power in your city and you're desperate for a way to do something meaningful about the problem of sadistic police brutality, I implore you: give the people a Bully Cop Veto!