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Reforming the US police would be a massive undertaking but I mean, it's not like the country lacks for resources, whether money, materiel, or manpower. This is after all the country that was able to set up places like Willow Run in WW2, and we've had most of a century of technological and management advances since then, the money is there, the people could be found, the systems could be implemented, if someone in power wanted to do it.

Really we're talking about a much broader set of changes than just the police, but assuming we're limited pretty much to just them, my own list would be something like;

1a) Demilitarize the police. Regular cops are not armed as a matter of course. Maybe (given America's major problem with gun violence) if it can be demonstrated that there's a pressing need in a given area (e.g. particularly high rates of armed robberies), a small proportion of squad cars may have like a shotgun in the trunk, but said cars are manned by cops who undertake major extra and special training, and activate all kinds of additional recording things etc. if said gun is taken out.

1b) Specialist firearms units along the lines of the UK's, where they can have actual heavy gear, armored vehicles, etc., but the training they get has to be truly spectacular, must be kept regularly refreshed and updated, and with a very strict and clearly outlined set of rules on when and how these forces may be activated. i.e. if there's a terrorist attack or active shooting going down, they're called in. If there's someone claimed to have drugs, they're not.

2) A top-to-bottom overhaul in police culture. Root out the whole notion that they are some kind of embattled thin blue line that stands between an anarchic, violent public and order. Police must be a part of the community they operate in (Exceptions may need to exist for very specialized work, but certainly beat cops and the like should as much as possible live in the areas they patrol and so forth). De-escalation of tense situations should be held up as the highest thing for a cop to aspire to. There should be universal acceptance among the public and police that if you're going to give someone police powers, they must be held to a higher standard than the public. Even fascist dystopian hellscape Judge Dredd has that as an important part of their Judges, and a corrupt Judge is explicitly treated far more severely than a citizen committing the same crime. If Mega City One can manage that kind of principle then we should be able to as well. No more acceptance of excuses about it being a "dangerous" or "stressful" job, many jobs are worse and are neither given as causes of malfeasance nor accepted as causes of it. Police today are obsessed with "respect" without comprehending what respect is, and substituing fearful obedience for it. We should have police who have a real understanding of respect, and who possess it because they have, individually and institutionally, earned respect - knowing that you can go to them for help without fear of being mistreated yourself, and knowing that if you attract the attention of the police your interactions will be professional, evenhanded, and genuinely not dangerous for you unless you really are the one who starts trouble, regardless of your race.

3) A complete overhaul in training to support the other objectives. It should be a much, much longer course. Flip the psychological screening around so that people who are inclined towards peaceable resolutions are encouraged to join, not barred, and petty fascists are the ones who can't get in. Probably get rid of intelligence tests entirely because there's no way those are trustworthy or useful anyway. It should include extensive study of at least a fairly broad selection of relevant laws, as well as police regulations on how to operate. Ultimately reconfigure the idea of what the police are for, what justice itself is, and what constitutes the successful enhancement of said justice.

4) Pair police up, if not on a per-unit basis at least on a per-precinct one, with social workers, psychologists, and so on. They should be involved as much as possible to help calm situations, to be able to direct people in distress to resources that can help them, and follow up on cases that may not have warranted an arrest to see how things are going the next day, two days, week, whatever.

5) Police should always have local community oversight and involvement. A council, oversight committee, whatever it might be, formed of people from the community a given precinct handles, with appropriate balances that represent the local population demographically. (The constitution of the police force itself should similarly reflect the makeup.) I'm not smart enough to outlay what kinds of actual powers they should have but they should at the very least be able to set an investigation in motion if wrongdoing is alleged. In a perfect world, it should be entirely possible for someone who has committed a more minor offense to go to their local cop, talk about what went down, and get help to sort things out in a productive way - sort of like a light side parallel to the way a middle class white kids will get "boys will be boys" or "he comes from a good family" or the like. All of this can also be tied together with exactly the kind of feel-good stuff both police and shitlibs love, as long as you're careful to avoid indoctrination or anything, but enhancing cops and regular folks getting to know each other personally. I'd suggest such oversight councils should probably also have a role to play in sentencing, at the least being able to make suggestions, things like "If the guilty is willing to do X amount of community service in our community, and to attend anger management classes, we'd recommend that over a prison sentence".

6) Crimes need to be thoroughly reviewed and reformed as well. Both in terms of what constitutes a crime, how a cop handles a crime, and sentencing guidelines (We'll take as read that reforms to what prison is should be included as part of all this). Obviously laws intended as racial cudgels need to go (War on Drugs), things like similar drugs being handled differently depending on whether they're predominantly used by white or black people, sentencing being vastly different for white and black people, and so on. When something is still a crime there needs to be some sense in how it's handled. If some kids are raking about doing a vandalism then we can probably have useful structures outside of taking them through the courts to help - see point 4.

7) Where someone is harmed as a result of crime then we should pursue the best known techniques for helping them recover and heal. This might be fairly simple - a general fund to help compensate people who are victims of thefts or vandalism for instance - but my understanding is that resorative justice is currently well-regarded and considered more effective than most alternatives, so that kind of thing should be pursued (And we should always keep an eye out for ways to either make this more effective and alternatives that might be better still).

8) Abolition of nakedly exploitative things like asset siezure, using fines simply to augment the department's bottom line, etc. etc. and similarly end all involvement of the private sector in prisons, because quite aside from other issues of prison reform that alone creates a massive incentive to send people to jail and enslave them there. Immediately release from prison of people who are there on things like non-violent drugs charges and, again, end the war of drugs completely. Immediate cessation of the death penalty, both because it's immoral in its own right, but also because of racial biases, corruption, and the fact that America does actually have a very lengthy and serious process of investigation and reviews and appeals and still gets it wrong so often.

9) To achieve all this we almost certainly need to undertake a massive overhaul in current police employment and stuff, which is largely going to be best achieved by the bitter pill of doing what jabby suggests and something that has been done elsewhere, and simply let go anyone who doesn't want to be part of the changes with good pensions. As I say, a bitter pill, but probably a necessary one. Of course, what might have been an element of reform that left nobody truly happy but was an "I can live with it" compromise is probably completely out of the window after the last few days, like so many other potential measures. On the other hand justice demands we do something about historical abuses, so there has to be a line that's walked between which cops are investigated/prosecuted/etc. and which are allowed to pass by for reasons of pure pragmatism. I'm not a victim so it's very much not for me to say where that line is, but certainly historic cases involving deaths and serious violence, as well as framing and corruption, need to be investigated, probably some sort of Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

9b) Overhaul Internal Affairs departments so that they're empowered, well-funded, and extensive, and both willing and able to follow leads wherever necessary. Part of changing police culture needs to be making sure IA is welcomed in any department and that cops who are crooked or violent or the like being rooted out is seen as a good thing. Rather than the trope of IA being a bunch of assholes getting in the way of "real" police work.

10) Changes to trials themselves would also be good. I don't know enough to say exactly what would be needed, but something that accounts for how notoriously inaccurate eyewitness testimony is even when people of completely good faith and honesty give it would be a good start. I'm not a big fan of the adversarial system per se, but I do think everyone accused of a crime should absolutely have someone whose job it is to fight their corner. That OTOH runs into problems of "He's a good kid with a bright future he just got a little over-excited" and idk how to balance that, but finding a way to would be important and productive imo. Similarly we need to do something about character assassinations, rape trials being the most obvious problem here but really throughout.

11) Cops should, if they're actually in good standing and behaving themselves properly and conducting themselves well, be paid fairly generously and with benefits and pensions and stuff. Partly because everyone should, but also partly because A) We want to attract and retain people who are actually good for the job, and B) It'll probably help somewhat to reduce stresses and the allure of corruption if police aren't worrying about paying the bills and so on.

Of course all of this would be made massively easier by other changes throughout society. As an obvious example, there are myriad ways we can reduce domestic abuse (quite aside from the police being such avid practitioners of it) that don't even require most or any of the above, things like empowering women and ensuring women have authority and autonomy over things like pregnancy, creating a culture that reduces toxic masculinity, etc.. Providing for your population in terms of housing and welfare logically reduces their desperation and thus crime. Creating real communities instead of the busted situation capitalism itself has created would help reduce alienation and thus both reduce people's willingness to commit crime while also increasing their support networks and, again, reducing desperation.

Well that turned into an effortpost, and I obviously lied about not wanting to tell others what police reform should look like. It's just some thoughts really. And obviously it's a pretty massive list that would entail extensive, long-term, expensive work to pursue. It would certainly not be easy, but I do believe that with political will it would have been possible to do it. Bernie, certainly, might have had a real shot at leading reforms on this scale, and if there was genuine political leadership in America it could have been pushed forward as at least a general principle to pursue in the last few days. Pretending my list is a good one, imagine if Biden had put out something like this alongside credible, believable statements about his intention to pursue it should he become President - it could immediately have become both a focal point for how to proceed, have helped calm the situation by promising a real alternative that could be started in January, have created a dramatic boost to his campaign that brought in huge donations and volunteer efforts and support, and so on. All the people on the streets the last week would have a place to channel their energy and anger, with a real goal in sight. Instead, we got "Shoot them in the legs", and as my friend Karen said earlier, "I don't know why I expected anything better of a man who can only shoot himself in the foot". Of course, there are plenty of structural reasons Biden and most of the Dems aren't all aboard such a thing, but it could have been pursued as a credible policy platform, is my point, and probably one that made political hay.