As parent points out, there is a difference in training: the previous department would've been fired in its entirety. That's a fairly impactful piece of training.

What changes in training do you think would have prevented this? Do you think the cops didn't know that it was wrong for them to use home invasions to intimidate critics?

>it will do nothing to take care of the folks that were elected in (sherriff and prosecutor, for example).

I won't deny that rot starts at the top, but part of that rot is never firing misbehaving employees. You emphasise training, I emphasise learning, and the only way to learn is not fiddling around with the curriculum, it's not giving cops an extra year of training. What helps people learn is bad cops fucking around and finding out.

You can give people as much training as you want, but if they see other cops getting away with this gang nonsense, they will learn that you can do that and nothing bad will come of it.

If we assume there was a criminal conspiracy among the police to knowingly use fabricated evidence, then the issue is not so much with training (through an ethics class might help). The main issue would be structural in the police organization that allowed a criminal conspiracy to exist, and a significant lack of effective regulations.

No matter how good a person you start out as, when you enter an environment where

- A large percentage of the people are already bad

- Anyone who pushes back against bad behavior is shunned, fired, or left "without backup" in bad situations

- There are no repercussions for bad behavior

- There are positive reinforcements for bad behavior

Eventually, you're either going to be driven out, or you're going to turn. So wiping the place clean and starting from scratch, while drastic (and _certainly not appropriate everywhere) can be a valid approach when the problem is rampant across the entire department.