This is truly awful. The sheer lack of restraint involved in this raid is sickening. :/
Complaints are something they just ignore. Settlements hurt.
If this was some national security incident where the nephew was about to activate a nuclear weapon this sort of force might be justified. That it was for drugs is the most disturbing part. How does that help anyone in any capacity?
Atlanta, small for a "big" city and with a terribly low budget relative to its size set its 2014 budget at 550M. A few million dollar wrongful death/abuse settlements each year don't even get noticed.
It helps police departments keep their budgets and continues their access to militarization programs (where the DoD gives them surplus equipment after combat operations).
There is no excuse whatsoever for what happened.
...the taxpayers. But probably just a few dollars per individual per year, so not enough to cause enough outrage to change things.
Sometimes the only way to get change is to make it painful to not change.
One incident will not be enough, but if this becomes epidemic and they're spending $50M a year on lawsuits...
However, the problem is systemic. I don't see a change without major adjustments to the law which would be highly unpopular, eg mandatory life sentences for crimes committed by police officers or similarly draconian measures.
But sure, let's run with your assumption.
"The problem is that certainty of punishment is difficult to achieve"
"X is hard, therefore Y," without establishing that Y is worthwhile, is a piece of reasoning responsible for many ills. Yes, it's a cost-benefit thing, but bear the following points in mind:
When you have (X * Y) in general, and X >> Y, you can make a much bigger difference with a small change to Y than a big change to X (unless it's an exceptionally big change to X).
Costs of long term imprisonment scales with the medical needs of the people we're imprisoning, which is much faster than linear.
Draconian sentencing means we're doing harm to the those we falsely convict (which will inevitably be above zero); this means increasing the risk to innocent officers, which lowers the quality of officers we can recruit.
"especially where co-offenders have a strong incentive to back each other up - in this case, groups of police officers :-("
This is a tremendous issue, for sure, but it is one that needs to be resolved for a whole host of reasons, of which this is only one.
Note that a more draconian sentence reinforces this - if I think there's a chance my innocent buddy is getting sent up for life, I'm more concerned (and therefore, presumably, more willing to stretch the truth) than if I think there's a chance my innocent buddy is getting a slap on the wrist - so if I'm mistaken about my buddy's innocence, raising X might actually decrease Y. (Actually, that holds even if I think my buddy is guilty of something that doesn't deserve so stiff a penalty...)
Unfortunately South Africa's police force has also learned from the USA, as have others I see. Granted a Swat team is necessary sometimes, but overall the Police force is just becoming more indimidatory and inhumane. It's a bad trend, and a real threat to civil society.