A sea change will be necessary to transform US police training and practices - this is not disarming the police, only changing the consequences for promoting a culture of excessive force.
To fix the wrong, we should change the rules of engagement. A police officer confronting someone suspected of only a minor crime should not be permitted to arrest the suspect by force. In most cases, the police should simply issue a ticket. If the police wish to take someone into custody, they should not use force but instead issue a warning, like the Miranda warning, backed by a sanction. The text might say something like: “I am placing you under arrest. You must come with me to the station. If you don’t come, you’re committing a separate crime, for which you may be punished.” If the person complies upon hearing the warning, that ends the matter. If not, then the police can obtain a warrant from a judge and make a forcible arrest for both the old crime and the new. Similar rules of engagement should govern searches based on suspicion of petty crimes.
Such rules would not only protect the public’s rights but also promote law and order. Many critics rightly doubt that maximally aggressive “broken windows” public-order policing works. And other countries marry nonviolent rules of engagement with effective law enforcement; Germany, for example, imposes strict limits on the use of force to arrest petty offenders, and the entire German police, governing a population of 80 million, fired only 85 bullets in 2011. Moreover, nonviolent rules of engagement would also protect the police. Officers must of course retain the right to defend themselves when subject to attack. But by inviting police to initiate force, current practices require officers to control a naturally escalating dynamic that can quickly endanger all concerned.