Hm, I was not saying there was a backlash after Rodney King. (I mean... from the people on the ground, there was a pretty fuckin big backlash but it all got written down by people in charge as a destructive riot for no reason.) There was no backlash 10 years later, or 20 years later, when the police in the US were still killing black people and everything was basically fine and unchanged except for some protests when it happened and people found out.
Basically it took until 2020 to reach the point where everything made national news as a rule, cops involved with Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery all got charges, the DA got indicted, the whole fuckin country exploded, they burned down the police station, etc etc. It was a big deal.
The state of play post 2020 is that if an unarmed black man gets shot, it gets scrutinized, the bodycam footage gets released, everyone pores over it to see if something went wrong. It's assumed that the cops will get charges if something fucked up happened. All the roaches in the walls that were always there, in 2010 when cell phone use was still below 50% and grabbing video of what was going on wasn't at all universal, have been at least partially in the light for a while, and a lot of the (absolutely, well justified) anger that was 2010-2020 has produced a lot of changes.
If it sounds like anything I am saying means that I think policing is fixed, I do not. I don't think it will ever really be "fixed." If 10% or 2% or 1% of cops are dirty, it's a big problem. But also, I think fixing the remaining problems will not come from pretending that we're still in 1992 and they're out here just killing people and it's fine, there's no accountability for anything, no one ever gets fired or charged with anything, and every cop is automatically a bad person.