For your general information, it turns out that there's some other stuff going on right now in US policing that for some reason isn't being brought into the current discussion of policing practices:

New Video Shows Off-Duty Cop Fatally Shooting Black Man Delrawn Smalls, from Democracy Now! This is going on right now. It's interesting because the cop was out of uniform and off-duty--it appears the whole thing was a wild overreaction (on the cop's part) to road rage. The version of the event he gave after the fact is demonstrably false based on the video, but it seems like he's still being given "police protection." Even if you feel that the police have a uniquely hard job and therefore are justified in using force the rest of us would be arrested for using, how far does that extend? Does it mean that killing or violence in the private life of cops also gets a pass?

Wall Street Journal story on the same incident when it happened (the video of the incident was just released).

Judge threatens City of Chicago over Failure to Turn Over Documents (Chicago Tribune) The city's attorneys failed to disclose that the same guy who is currently being sued for using a Taser on a pregnant woman was declared unfit for duty twice and has killed someone before. Apparently the judge is partly distressed because the City of Chicago often has to be threatened to turn over evidence when police are sued.

And, in other "current police practices don't serve police officers well either" news:

May: Settlement in Chicago Cops' Lawsuit Spares Emanuel from Testifying on Code of Silence
Two whistleblower cops sued because of retaliation after they had exposed police corruption--the city (it appears, I haven't been following this case) decided to settle after the judge ruled that the cops could call Mayor Rahm Emanuel to testify on the police "code of silence." Now he won't have to testify. And the same story from the Chicago Tribune.

May: Gay officer sues the Memphis police department for discrimination.

May: Two Michigan State Troopers sue for discrimination and retaliation allegedly because they won their original lawsuit about discrimination. (OK, this is slightly funny to me, although I assume not to them)

May: New Haven's first black female police captain sues for discrimination and hostile work environment.

June: Whistleblower cops facing retaliation and suing in Baltimore

June again: Whistleblower assistant chief of police in Kauai sues because of retaliation

June, from the BBC:  A former officer sues the Cleveland Police Department for racial discrimination and bullying.The officer was Asian--he said Asians were widely treated as corrupt by other officers and the department didn't want to hear about it.

June, NYT: Muslim cop suing the NYPD because they wouldn't let him keep his beard as his faith dictates.

OK, are you noticing a pattern??? I only looked at newspaper articles since May 2016. These are not even all of the articles I saw in which cops are suing their departments, either for discrimination or retaliation after whistleblowing. There are a lot of similar cases going on in a lot of police departments. It turns out that police do this a LOT. I have no way of knowing if this is true anymore, but here's an article from 2014 claiming that at least in New Jersey, police departments are sued more often by their own officers than by civilians.

So why is that? It looks to me like that is in part because Internal Affairs Bureaus, which are supposed to investigate misconduct, retaliation, and discrimination when they're reported, are rarely responsive to complaints. In most areas that's the end of the line for any kind of internal complaint, because state, city, and county governments have virtually no oversight role in police department governance (and if they do, it seems like it's not exercised very well).  So the civil courts are essentially functioning as outside oversight, which is costly (for taxpayers, not for the police department itself--this is one reason why just suing as opposed to trying to bring criminal charges may not be an awesome idea, although it's recommended by a frustrated sounding Appeals Court judge in a recent Washington Post article here.). In a couple of newspaper reports, the litigants are explicitly quoted as saying that they tried internal channels first, but got no response: here are two black officers in Brookline, MA, who sued for racial discrimination who talk about this.

The point I'm trying to make is that it looks like (admittedly, based on media coverage, but again--did I say how many of these articles there were?) the debate about whether our "men and women in blue" deserve our support, love, and unquestioning obedience is the wrong one to be having. The complete unwillingness to hold police departments accountable for how they treat women and minorities and how they address misconduct and brutality in their ranks isn't just bad for civilians--it's also really bad for the cops themselves. Everyone keeps saying the cops shouldn't have to change because they're sacred and we should all be so grateful to them, etc--but an uncompromising system that doesn't allow critique or change, even from the inside, is a problem for the people who do that job. So let's stop defending the right of police departments to be autocratic and discriminatory and not to respond to critique in any way-whether it's about the treatment of employees or the brutalization of civilians. Let's have civilian oversight with real teeth. Let's have real oversight of employment practices by government officials who aren't in bed with politically powerful cops, if they can be found. A police system that was held accountable would actually help everyone.