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 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.