I refuse to accept this as a forgone conclusion. Clearly there is a place for a healthy, helpful police force in modern society. It's probably not even that far

I refuse to accept this as a forgone conclusion. Clearly there is a place for a healthy, helpful police force in modern society. It's probably not even that far from what we have - the key being the "broken windows" policy applied to the police themselves, and some critical changes in policy (making it illegal to lie about the law, or to coerce behavior based on a misrepresentation of the law). And of course, reforming the justice system to give citizens the kind of justice our founding fathers intended to give them. Technologies ability to record interactions and play them back later has already had a (positive) impact on police behavior, and I can only see that getting better. I also think that technology will revolutionize the justice system - I've been thinking a lot about what a distributed, remote jury trial system would look like, especially when there is excellent sensor data surrounding any contentious event.