MrOfficerPolice

Thank you KPD for your massive contributement to community relations.

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I would argue that the incentive to cover up or not believe complaints is much stronger than the honesty of most departments. Imagine you're a supervisor, and some woman off the streets comes into the station wailing and screaming about Officer Joe body slamming her on pavement. You know officer Joe, you've been friends and co-workers for years. He says it never happened, and there's no video. Who do you believe? That's part of the problem: There is no comprehensive system to police the police, or dispel false claims.
A lot of the time the victim of police abuse either hasn't done anything wrong, or is already in custody. There's been plenty of instances of suspects being assaulted in handcuffs and holding cells. Plenty of people get arrested, but you can't assault them once they are. For whatever reason, we seem to have two different solutions to that. My solution is "don't assault someone in custody", and yours seems to be "don't break the law in the first place". 
 
I had a gun pulled on me when I called 911 for my friends medical emergency. A cop pulled up and ordered me sit on the curb. When I tried to explain that my friend couldn't breath, he pulled his gun on me and detained me, all the while my friend was wheezing and gasping. How exactly was that my fault....?
My only caveat to that would be that I think in many cases, police unnecessarily escalate situations that might increase the officer's safety but endanger the safety of the citizen. Pulling guns on people shouldn't be the first step, it should be a last resort. I don't want to bring up race, but when a man of color is pulled over by police at night with no one else around, and feels unsafe, there's a problem there. I'm not calling for a witch hunt of police, I just think that departments should re-evaluate their use of force policies, and we as a country should find a better way to ensure that every complaint is thoroughly investigated and dealt with my someone other than the department in question. Perhaps the DOJ should handle those cases, and they've already taken steps to fund body cameras, which is essential in protecting both parties of a police interaction. As you said, everyone should be held accountable for their actions, which of course I agree with. So I think we can both agree that there's something wrong when there's a huge system created to police us, but next to nothing to police the police. We just have to balance the scales of accountability, that's all us libs are asking for lol