One direction into resolving this, which may seem counter intuitive, is to put more money into police training, and have higher salaries for desired positions.

This in turn (should) attract more people and thus get a better pool to select candidates from.

However the nepotism and in-group mentality does make this difficult to another degree.

Though to play devils advocate, it’s human nature to pull more into an in-group when you feel anyone outside that group is attacking you, and threatening your livelihood for the actions of others.

We should condemn the officers that act wrongly, but calling all of them bastards and such just makes the problem far worse.

Now there’s even greater incentive for police officers to stand with their own, and not call out inappropriate behavior.

Further, now people don’t want to be police officers, making the talent pool very low. And I don’t blame anyone for that. I had a desire to also be an officer at one point, but if I were a kid today, I’d steer clear of it even if I wanted to do more good.