Yes and no.

IMO, the issue is that the US Police are not one organization. There are over 10,000 police departments in America. In some towns, the Sheriff + Deputies are less than 10 people.

Some towns have a Sheriff who is democratically elected. This leads to massive lack of accountability, because there's no chance the Sheriff could be fired before the next election.

Under such a system, why would a Sheriff, or their deputies, ever get deescalation training?

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Washington DC serves as a great example of how confusing this gets when you start actually tracing the power structures.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/14/politics/trump-church-protest...

The shear amount of "blame shifting" going on for the Lafayette Park clearing is staggering.

> More than a half-dozen officials from the National Guard, federal law enforcement and public safety agencies have challenged the Trump administration's narrative that the clearing of peaceful protesters outside the White House earlier this month was unrelated to President Donald Trump's subsequent walk to a nearby church for a photo-op, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

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> But officials told The Post they weren't warned that US Park Police planned to push the perimeter or that force would be used.

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> The US Secret Service issued a statement Saturday admitting that an agency employee used pepper spray on June 1 during efforts to secure Lafayette Square and clear protesters.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/investigations/tear-gas-g...

> US Park Police, Arlington Police, DC Metro Police and the Secret Service have all denied using any kind of chemical irritants in Lafayette Square Monday evening. But WUSA9 crews were there, witnessed tear gas being deployed and collected the canisters afterward.

So at a minimum, there are ~5 Police Forces, each with different accountability structures, involved in the Lafyette Square clearing. It probably was only ONE Police Force that messed up (probably US Park Police??) that was the site of the brutal beatdown.

But all the different organizations get the blame, even if the officers are of completely different organizations.

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US Citizens typically have to deal with ~3 police organizations per location. The city (or county) police, the state police, and finally the federal police.

And the Feds are organized into multiple different police: DEA, ATF, FBI, and ICE.

There's a "weak" culture... the "thin blue line" where Police Officers do stand to protect each other, even if they are from different organizations. But when it comes to accepting the blame, they actually shift the blame between each other a lot. So you need to be very knowledgeable about your local police structure before you can even cast blame in a proper manner.

Even if some organizations are considered good (ie: FBI generally has a very good reputation), other organizations (ie: ICE) have a pretty negative reputation in unwanted use of force.

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Finally, a little example for how confusing this can get.

-- If you have a Sheriff, your only means of accountability is the election next year. A Sheriff and their deputies can pretty much do whatever they want. Any issues must be taken up with the Sheriff themselves in the meantime. If the Sheriff is uncooperative, you're left with voting them out next election (which is surprisingly difficult, because no one pays attention to local politics in America).

-- A Police "Chief" is typically a position that is held accountable by the Mayor. You can ask the Chief for police reforms, but traditionally people complain to the Mayor instead. IMO, this is a bit better than the Sheriff positions, since the Mayor can run on a platform of police reform in theory.

-- A Police Commissioner is held accountable by the City's Board. You need to convince a majority of the board member that there is a problem. Even if you convince your local board member that there's a problem, they will hold no power unless you convince the majority of the board.

-- Some municipalities, such as NYPD, have a citizen complain board, who are the dedicated organization to hear complaints. They'll issue lawyers to citizens who complain about issues to individually represent citizens in court. In these municipalities, the best action you'll get is from the citizen review board.