Police reformers' legitimate concerns

It is striking that while reason and courage have largely guided efforts to reform our democratic institutions, attempts to reform policing policies and practices have often found irrational intractability on both sides of the political aisle. In the wake of the brutal slayings of two of his police officers, Bill Bratton, commissioner of the New York City Police Department, has, for example, equated the current tension between his department and protesters seeking law enforcement reforms to the tension of the 1970s, when New York police officers were targeted and killed by militants attached to the black liberation movement.

http://www.telegram.com/article/20141229/COLUMN44/312299980