It's time for change.
If police unions want to survive, they will have to change to a common sense position that some cops deserved to be fired. In the end, it is best for everyone. But in my experience, unions are controlled by ideologies who do not budge or compromise, even when it is in everyone's best interest.
The key issue.
Bad cops, only a tiny percentage of all cops, cannot be fired thanks to blind universal support that the unions give to every cop, no matter how bad their record. Police departments nationwide try to fire the worst of the worst, and the unions make sure they are reinstated. The police unions need to step up and agree to go along with the firing of cops with bad records.
I worked in a union chemical plant for many years, and I saw an operator on midnight shift who deliberately violated a red tag (opened a valve with a tag that warned everyone not to open it), spilled thousands of gallons of chemicals into a dike, and to cover up his mistake, added thousands of gallons of acid to approximately neutralize and pumped it to the waste water treatment plant without notifying them. The result was an unreported chemical release to the atmosphere and the destruction of waste water treatment operation for weeks. He was immediately fired, but the union supported him, and he was reinstated a year later with back pay.
The police unions do the same thing - they work tirelessly to reinstate the worst of the cops that should be fired. This has resulted in a lot of unnecessary deaths over the decades, not to mention how it has ruined the relationship between a society that needs law and order thank the police who provide it.
That bad 1% does a lot of damage.