I see this much like the Civil Rights Act. There was no way segregation was going to be ended without significant legislation and enforcement from the federal government.
Bottom line is that the sort of large scale reform needed to end systemic problems of police misconduct is going to be extremely difficult to achieve via local reforms. Congress needs to end qualified immunity, end civil asset forfeiture, increase federal oversight, and potentially write new laws governing the use of body cams.
One idea I've seen from police reformers is a 'Missing Video Presumption' law. The basic idea is that if the body cam (or vehicle cam) footage goes missing and there is a conflicting account of events, the court will presume the video would've corroborated the civilian's version of events. This would give an extremely strong incentive to not turn off cameras or sabotage video as police have done in a number of cases.
A lot of these policing issues seems to come from progressive localities so I'm not sure it's even due to government unwillingness to solve the issues.
Most organizations are really extremely bad at dealing with internal abuses which is why external watchdogs could work very well.
Mandatory body cams make a lot of sense but if you need to deal with the opposition of 1000s local police unions it's not going to happen very quickly.
> A lot of these policing issues seems to come from progressive localities so I'm not sure it's even due to government unwillingness to solve the issues.
Part of the reason for this is that police unions fight vigorously against reform and police unions are powerful in local politics. That's why some police departments ended up getting disbanded by their municipalities to restart from the ground up.
It seems like opposition to body cams in general isn't strong, but the real fight will come when stronger laws are proposed for when body cams need to be on, penalties for not having them on, and when footage must be released.
> police unions fight vigorously against reform and police unions are powerful in local politics
Aren't the Democrats the notionally pro-union party? I think it has fallen out of rhetorical favour in recent years, but I thought there was an association between Democrats being in charge and strong local union presences.
Police unions are seen as an exception to the usual party alignment. The Minneapolis police union and its president Bob Kroll supported Trump's campaign:
External watchdogs are only as good as their leaders. For example, the Seattle PD was recently under a consent decree with the Department of Justice over civil rights abuses. Yet they still beat the shit out of people expressing their 1st Amendment rights.
Most large PDs are in urban areas that are either in blue states, or that are blue islands in red states. They also tend to be the most problematic. So this problem can largely be solved at municipal level - if there's political will for it.
One idea I've seen from police reformers is a 'Missing Video Presumption' law. The basic idea is that if the body cam (or vehicle cam) footage goes missing and there is a conflicting account of events, the court will presume the video would've corroborated the civilian's version of events. This would give an extremely strong incentive to not turn off cameras or sabotage video as police have done in a number of cases.