I will caution optimism based on tone. The reporter also filed a complaint on the officer in charge of this very incident. The SPD review concluded that "The officer took a normal contact with a member of the public and turned it into a confrontation and escalated it to a point where he was acting in a completely unprofessional and inappropriate manner". The punishment for completely unprofessional behavior by the officer in charge was "one unpaid day off of work" which was "an appropriate measure" in the "middle of the range of possible disciplinary actions". That doesn't strike me as taking it seriously. The sounds to me like a slap on the wrist for being unlucky and causing a PR issue for the police by doing this to a real journalist.

There have always been individual police officers and sheriffs who take a stand against the abuse. The US such is a big country, how could it be otherwise? You can probably find a thousand similar examples if you look hard enough. I think it's already pretty comical that "Officer gets fired after long history of abuse" is news in the first place.

Optimism is only warranted when we have reason to believe things are getting better. One anecdote doesn't do much.