This leads to my next step, of having an outside consultant come into the case and thoroughly investigate the entirety of what happened. The consultant will come to a conclusion by interviewing witnesses, collecting evidence and many other steps such as looking at similar cases in the past to get an appropriate feeling of the case and what punishment should be given and hearing the accused officers side of the story in order to create a final, unbiased opinion on what punishment, if any should be given to the officers (Police Misconduct). The part of the process where the consultant looks back on prior cases to get a feeling on what level of punishment should be given is based off of system of common law developed in the early years of this country in order to ensure people are not too harshly or lightly punished for the act that they are being charged for (Law-Berkeley). The idea of having a consultant come in to the investigation is similar to West Virginia where they have a Professional Standards Section that performs these same duties but then reports back to the superintendent of police to make the final decision (Police Misconduct). My solution will differ in that the outside consultant will make the final decision instead of the superintendent because the superintendent could be biased towards the officer or not want his department getting a bad reputation. Although West Virginia does have a great system where every complaint must be reviewed the most common action for accused officers was a letter of reprimand (Police Misconduct). This clearly shows a problem in the current policies because accusations of police brutality are not to be taken lightly and should have greater consequences tied to them other than a simple reprimand.
My solution would sternly punish all officers convicted of excessive force no matter what level of force they had used. I would enact a system that has three levels of punishment: minor, mild, and severe.