Generally, police abuse of power has to be a gross abuse, willful or reckless, before a liability under the civil rights laws occurs, along with an actual injury. Police departments sometimes are ultra cautious with claims, and those departments sometimes will wreck careers unfairly to keep themselves from any danger of paying damages. On the other hand, if a pattern of abuse is present, as seems to have been the history in Los Angeles, strong action has to be taken or liability will follow. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to yell abuse when the police are just trying to do their job in the heat of the moment. Unfounded retaliatory complaints made just to muddy the water and only on the theory that the best defense is a good offense, tend very much to explain the wall of silence that surrounds many police departments.
Education is a civil right too.
The law says that all children in public schooling are entitled to substantially the same educational opportunities, regardless of race, religion, color, gender, or national origin. Funding is critical to the quality of facilities, and the quality of the faculty, yet the amounts of money available for education vary widely between tax districts and school districts. A rich section of the community can and does pay far more per pupil than a different school district perhaps just a mile away. Some experts have called for statewide funding of school districts, with elimination of all local funding, to erase these funding disparities, but so far it has not happened anywhere . The Constitution says that Congress is authorized to establish land and naval forces, an Army and Navy, and by extension, an Air Force.