Forbid local police departments from receiving military-grade equipment via the Pentagon’s 1033 program.
Remove qualified immunity. If a cop beats you up, kills your dog, kills a family member or friend, or otherwise violates your rights, you should be able to sue them.
Strip them of their ability to unionize. Cop unions protect bad cops. In fact, take away the ability to unionize from every public employee.
Establish independent review boards to investigate police misconduct. No more “internal investigations”.
Standardize punishment for failing to activate body cameras during encounters with the public.
Stop training cops to believe that they are in a war zone. They’re not. But if they’re trained to think they are, they’ll act like it, and the innocent will suffer.
A firewall immediately placed between local departments and outside funding. Police departments must be funded by the community they patrol. Outside funding is the poison that corrupts everything.
Not every cop needs a gun. Nor does every cop needs to be a walking avatar of the surveillance State. Cops again need to be a part of their community, and given wide latitude for friendly, peaceful interaction with the public. They need to build trust but being allowed to be a human being.
And finally, and probably most importantly, stop supporting the growth of government. Libertarians are often ridiculed for their opposition to “big government”. But what they mean is the continuous creation of new laws and regulations that place greater numbers of the most vulnerable people in conflict with the police. Because who do you think has to enforce all those laws? The cops. And more laws means more unpleasant encounters between citizens and cops. Live and let live. Legalize every voluntary interaction and exchange. Hostile interactions between the people and the cops would plummet to a zero point.
All of this is simple and direct. It doesn’t even require the color of one’s skin to be brought into the picture at all. No need for trillions of dollars spending on “initiatives”. It would probably be far cheaper than the racket operating openly today. No need to needlessly and dangerously sow racial division. No need for never-ending discussions of “white guilt”. It would be bipartisan. What thinking person would fail to support the above points?
Many of the protesters have their hearts in the right place, and genuinely desire to see positive change. But my prediction is that the riots will discredit the message of the protesters, who will lose credibility, and then be subsumed within the Democratic Party, who will never meaningfully fulfill the goal of true institutional change within law enforcement. The former protesters will grow cynical, and the dream of real change will be lost.
