I think part of the problem in the US is the culture where eg police departments compete for resources basically to make their own department bigger. One of the ideas in the Ron Paul movement was that governments needs to be smaller. Of course, in the real world it probably should not go as far as Ron Paul suggests, but....
The main cultural problem in the US is the acceptance, but the white majority at least, that police behaving like they do is part of the job and acceptable.
I refer to the fact that you can be tased, shot, beat, arrested, held down by 4 policemen, beaten etc 10 times more easily than you can in Western Europe -- and people think that's OK, or what "the police is supposed to do".
Even the fact that getting out of your car when stopped by a traffic cop (something totally OK in 99% of the world) means you can be shot in the US...
I don't think the white majority finds that behavior acceptable either. Twice as many white people are killed by cops every year as black people for example (and yes, I understand the population ratios, my point is it's still a lot of white people also being killed by cops). I think it's primarily a question of: how to stop it, what reforms to make, where to start?
>I don't think the white majority finds that behavior acceptable either.
Acceptable at least in the sense that there's not widespread revolt against it.
A couple of US style incidents in other western european countries would have toppled the government or at least the justice minister -- and yet tons of them happen in the US with little to no protest (aside from special activists and groups).
Acceptable also in the sense that it's the prevalent wisdom: "don't do this or that, or you'll might get shot/tased/etc", which people have internalized, instead of considering something rare and outrageous.
The fact that a cop can shoot someone (black or white) just like that, and that it happens tons of times a year, is not much different to my European sensibilities than still having the segreggation. Or still having the death penalty -- oh, wait, they have that too...
