By design, there is no "the police" in the US. We have a very loose patchwork of local, county, state and federal Law Enforcement . Some elected, appointed, hired---no national standards for vetting, training and accountability. 1/

This does not mean that we cannot establish a national-level independent watch dog, an Inspector General for Law Enforcement, with presence all the way down to local precincts. Make Internal Affairs independent of local politics and pressures. 2/

Partner with agencies like the ACLU and the local press. Transparency should be the watchword. Toll free, Hotlines, easy to use websites, anonymous reporting, investigators, track data, history of complaints for individuals, agencies/offices, systemic failures. 3/

Not only could this agency conduct investigations and recommend action, it can also be charged with distributing lessons learned, and recommend training and vetting standards at a national level. It can even grade LE elements on a national scale. 4/

We need to disabuse the notion of the thin blue line. There is no invisible line between us and them. We are all from the same communities. This culture needs to be addressed. One way to do it is to decide how we manage accountability. What we have now, is not working. end.