Some thoughts:
Police reform is going to be long and hard and fought at every step of the way, especially by the police unions and their political sympathizers, but civilians need control back from their police forces. There needs to be a reestablishment of political control over the police. These issues of brutality and the oversight of brutality are fundamental issues of citizenry and the state, and shouldn't be won or lost at the bargaining table between state lawyers and union lawyers. Our politicians -- who comprise the state and are represented by their attorneys -- are all too willing to gamble away our rights for comity with the unions and the bloc of voters to which they appeal (and there are many that the law and order agenda appeals to, on both sides, though the voters that support the police unions and the blue line tend to lean much more Republican, or in cities, to moderate Democrats if we're being honest). There needs to be a long effort at state, municipal, city, and town levels of government to re-establish the oversight that many communities have lost to the unions and their voters.
There's also something to be said for individual oversight, namely in the form of protections for those taking video and audio of events. We've seen brutality and property damage happen in situations simply for filming events. People have been arrested, accosted, had their recording devices smashed, everything under the sun has happened in order that some bad cops may not be caught on video committing heinous acts. What does this mean? On one hand, it means legislatively affirming the right to capture audio and video of police officers. States and localities should have this set in stone in legislation, and should push for police officers, as agents of the law, to undergo compulsory understanding of new legislation so that they cannot feign innocence as to the extent and purpose of these laws.
At the federal level, there needs to be a demilitarization of the police. Full stop. No more tanks, no more SWAT units in small towns. The practice of SWATting in internet lore tells you all you need to know about the level of violence inherent in SWAT units and that which they bring with them. We have nothing short of military actions happening in our homes with the imprimatur of approval from upstanding judges and magistrates. These units are basically standing armies, and the citizen is powerless over their tactical might. The fundamental imbalance of power the individual suffers at the hands of tactical units is akin to that of a subject-state relationship rather than one of a citizen-state. In the name of protection of ourselves we have allowed essentially what is a standing military to invade other citizen's houses and places of work. That must end.
And lastly, this cannot happen without restraint of the citizen, both in deed and in busybodiness. We cannot police those that refuse to act within the Golden Rule. If there is a rejection of violence and civility at the personal level, our democracy will descend into a police state in order to protect that which is precious. Our rights will evaporate if people cannot act with restraint toward other people. As far as property and rights go, we cannot continue to lose our rights over own our protections of the self, namely the police apparatus designed to interdict, intercept, and prevent the voluntary ingestion of drugs for recreational purposes. At its fundamental level, The War On Drugs (is a ####ty band) is a failed war that has resulted in the most insane and anti-Constitutional legislation and "protection" of the self by others who have determined what is right and proper to ingest or partake in. Everything from the right to self-determination with one's own life, to the right to property, to the right to counsel, to the right just to be ordinarily left alone by state apparatus in implicated by this war to protect people, at heart, from themselves. The reformer and utopian gaze was set upon bodily integrity and soul purity, and we have seen with alcohol where that culminates politically; it is time to back up a bit and not look at things so myopically that we sacrifice the values of our country for the sake of an evangelical purity of spirit. Time to end that war, begotten in a borderline religiosity, so long since dramatically enforced.
And that's about all for now. Thanks for reading if you did.