> In the case of Baltimore, these are massive systemic problems that involve not just the police, but also the community as a whole and forces outside the community as well. How can you discuss the problems with police misconduct without talking about the drug war, inner city poverty, stat based policing and the poisonous incentives they create, the lack of stable homes, and so on and so on and so on.

Instead of my answering how the issue of cops carrying toy guns to plant on people they killed can be discussed without these other things, can you first show how they're connected, like, at all?

> Yes you might be able to solve police misconduct by forcing them to turn on each other and report and aggressively as possible. You probably will utterly destroy any semblance of morale and group cohesion and won't have a functioning police force at the end.

I don't think it's so simple. First off, morale starts with an individual. Yes, all people need support, people in such hardcore professions where they cannot share so much with non-colleagues, doubly so. But still, it starts and ends with individuals, and nothing helps more with enduring the hardships of a job than pride and professionalism. The alienated identification with a group however, "my group right or wrong", lasts exactly as long as that group has power, and the people it "works" for you kinda don't want to have anywhere near any position of authority.

Right now, cops who refused to be crooks get turned on by other cops. So it's not like you have a choice about snitching, you have the choice whether people with integrity snitch on murderers and liars, or whether murderers and liars mob people with integrity. Likewise you have to decide between individuals who can look in the mirror having the back of other individuals who can look in the mirror, or some sort of "group morale" that repels individuals that can look in the mirror.

> Yes, we could ban guns from the population.

That brings me back to the above, I still don't see the connection between the very real dangers of the job and planting toy guns being an alleviating response to it.

> Body cams will help, but even if people trust police, how does that solve the problem where being a drug dealer is probably the best opportunity you have in the inner city?

Again, there's the connection missing between someone being a drug dealer, and killing them then planting a weapon on them.

> People unfortunately tend to focus on their pet issue of choice and ignore the others.

Likewise, people exclude solutions without a real good reason, like cops with integrity being given the means and moral support -- from the population [0], not just each other -- to clean house, because that automagically makes the job impossible, instead of better and easier. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't say just that is enough, but I'll claim it's futile without it. If you focus on the "cohesion" of the "force" part in "police force" at the extent of the "police" bit, you throw out the baby with the bathwater and "at the end" have a domestic enemy that will call anyone domestic enemy who dares oppose them.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkyVsY8j2-8&t=10m28s