How about instead of just crying "the system is broken!", offering feasible solutions on how to change the system?
Who said the system is broken? It's doing exactly what it was designed to do.
The regulations are designed to calm and mislead the public, yet be ignored without consequence. The only failure of the system is that people are becoming aware of its purpose and the utter lack of accountability in which it flourished. The only justice comes from individuals recording and disseminating the truth, and public demonstrations resulting in individual cops being sacrificed as scapegoats. And the system does not change.
Bizarrely there are still people crying "It's GOOD that they can murder us! The system is good!" over every case of police violence. That's the conversation we were having, before we could even talk about solutions- a classic defense in depth.
Given society does need some kind of law enforcement institution so you can't just disband all forces and have a time of no coverage, what do you do?
Debateable. I'm sure we all know that our modern police system was developed less than a couple centuries ago, for ignoble ends, and civilization seems to be a bit older than that. Even cities!
Maybe something like "any fatality or need for medical treatment of a suspect on your shift, you have a mandatory X-month paid leave, pending investigation by an independent organization. Any second fatality or need for medical treatment on your shift within 1 year is mandatory X month unpaid leave, pending investigation by an independent organization. Three such instances in any 3 year span is mandatory termination with a four-year ban on serving in law enforcement. If investigation finds excessive force: you're immediately terminated, banned for life from law enforcement, and possibly subject to imprisonment."
You still have the possibility of investigation being abused, but the mandatory clauses which are not subject to investigation findings should reduce the hazard there. Also I suppose if the investigations are not done by people part of the direct law enforcement agency, that would probably help... I guess maybe Internal Affairs is already "independent" in some sense, but maybe needs more independence?
There is a LOT we need to change about the policing system. I'm skeptical that another set of legal patches are going to work this time, particularly when police-defenders are in this very thread *ignoring the laws and regulations on the books*. But maybe if we completely overhaul Internal Affairs into something that serves the public, that could someday result in a system of policing where it's possible to be a good officer and not get fired.
In specific terms: Law enforcement should come from the communities they police, more positions should be subject to election and recall, and the conversation certainly needs to move on from "the cop was afraid so murder is fine". It's "strange" that the latter ever comes up anymore.
Edit: Oh, and everything Frumple said there, obviously. We have models of policing which are less shitty than ours. They're still fundamentally evil but we're insisting on talking about incremental reform I guess, so...