Cops vs. criminals no zero sum game

To some folks I've dialogued with, the issue of cops versus criminals is  a zero sum game. Any criticism of the police as a group detracts from good law enforcement which protects all us law abiding folks. One even claimed the shooting of Laquan McDonald started out as a 'good' shooting that went wrong only because the officer kept shooting after McDonald was motionless, setting off civil unrest. In his world view excessive   police force on either innocent citizens or non life-threatening offenders doesn't exist.  

That mindset needs to change. Cops versus criminals is not a zero sum game. As we've learned from Chicago's half billion dollar excessive force settlements in the past decade, most of that dough was coughed up by a tiny slice of Chicago's 12,000 finest. Retrain or remove such cops and not only will our disappearing treasury stabilize, public trust of the police will increase, and less citizens will be unnecessarily harmed, or even killed.

We should treat the small percentage of unfit cops like we treat the small percentage of unfit surgeons: we prevent them from operating. We should no more allow an unfit cop to protect our safety than we would allow an unfit surgeon to operate on a loved one. There is one big difference: the good doctors don't depend on the unfit ones to protect their hide on the street. The 'blue code' is not designed to protect the public; it's designed to protect the partners and colleagues of the bad cops who have their back. While understandable, it is not acceptable in  our fractured, assault weapon soaked society. Every segment of society, especially including the vast majority of good police, must work together to weed out the unfit so the vast majority can do effective police work to protect us all.