Is the police force too powerful?

[bedstuy]

I would say yes.  But...

I don't think I buy the argument about unions.  If there's a problem with the CBA that makes it difficult to punish police officers for civil rights violations, crimes and tortious acts, fix the CBA.  Police officers still deserve to be paid decent wages and benefits.  If you paid police officers like rent-a-cops you would get more problems because the quality of the labor force would be lower. 

On the civil rights issue, that's certainly a problem in some instances.  But, it's tough to make any reasonable argument at that level of generality.  What specific policies and doctrines should we change? 

Finally, it's easy for a suburban teenager to decry the police overreaching, because you don't have to deal with crime on a regular basis.  Public safety is actually extremely valuable, but you can easily undervalue it until you're the victim of a crime.