Some responses to the linked video:
That people are using this event to frame an argument about the police being racists is not arguing police brutality doesn't happen to white people. (In fact, these organizations have taken up the cause of white victims of police brutality as well). There is a difference is scale between how it happens to white people and people of color.
Further, even if this specific event is not racially motivated, it becomes a shorthand for the disproportionate amount of brutality that is leveled at people of color. Any particular case might not be racially motivated, but the trend that people of color are the victims of police violence far more often then white people exists.
A holistic approach to police brutality is fine, but if you look at it from a colorblind perspective, the differences in scale between ethnic groups is ignored. For example, in New York City, white people got stopped-and-frisked, but people of color were stopped and frisked at a much higher rate even though they had a much lower rate of being found with a gun, which was the stated purpose of the program. "Getting past" race would be great, but it's not on the people harmed, it's on the structures, organizations and people doing the harm.
Regarding privatizing the police: I can't imagine that working so well with police considering how its doing with prisons. Remember, you can forfeit your Constitutional rights to a private entity in a contract. For example YouTube/FaceBook is not beholden to the 1st Amendment. What would constrain private police to the Constitutional protections we enjoy now? We've had private police in history, see the abuses of the Pinkertons. Under our current system we the people have (notional) control over the government, and protections therefrom. We do not have protections against the depredations of corporations.
I don't think the market gives us the responsiveness that the speaker does. Consider "Right job at the right price," So you get top level courteous policing for the neighborhoods with large tax bases, and bargain basement "Screw your rights" policing for communities without the tax base? Considering that poverty is correlated with race, such a program would make these matters much worse. That budget operator can say "Well, your community can't afford a company that doesn't shoot first, what are you going to do?"
We have more power over governmental police because we have power of their their leadership, their budget and the laws that govern their behavior. Adding a layer of abstraction where the people control the government and the government contracts the police would make the police less accountable to the people. A solution is to grant more direct control of the police to the people. Create police review boards, have the policies and leadership of the police accountable to the people. Remove qualified immunity, And change the priority from cops coming home safely at the expense of the people, to the people being protected by the police, even the suspects.
Yes changing the law is important. And that is a part of the argument to defund or abolish the police. About the drug war, John Ehrlichman is on record saying the Drug war was started to harass black people and anti-war activists. Again, racism is at the root of these issues. We agree, that the over-policing is a big part of of the problem. Defunding the police in favor of programs to help people with problems, or abolishing the police to build something better in its place, these are ways to get to a more equitable world with less oppression.
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