It’s been almost a month now since the feds issued their scathing report indicting Seattle Police for regularly using excessive and unnecessary force.

What’s happened since?

There have been the usual acts of explaining away, of claiming the SPD merely had an image problem, of claiming further studies were needed and what the heck was the methodology the feds had used anyway.

The Seattle Police Officers Guild (that modern anomaly: a right-wing labor union) proclaimed that any departmental changes would have to come at the union bargaining table.

(Earlier last year, guild members were on the record claiming the city had a “socialist agenda,” had gone too far in protecting racial minorities, and was too critical of police who should be left to make their own decisions. The Guild’s newsletter often referred to the citizens the police should be protecting, and the city brass above the department, as “the enemy.” And the Guild started raising money to oust Mayor Mike McGinn, claiming he’d gone too far in “trying to fundamentally transform the deep-rooted culture of our beloved police department.”)

City Councilmember Tim Burgess (an SPD vet) issued a statement this week, saying the department needed “deep, fundamental reform,” beyond anything proposed thus far by McGinn. Many of Burgess’s specifics, however, were less about cop-on-civilian violence, and more about allocating manpower by neighborhoods and “beats.”

Similarly, the police themselves announced Thursday they were scrapping parts of their 2007 “Neighborhood Policing Plan.” The result, department leaders claim, will be more accountability among officers assigned in tight coherent units, rather than rotating between beats and supervisors.

All this is not exactly rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Some of it might actually help result in a more responsible, more accountable department, in the field and at the top.

But it probably won’t be enough.

As long as many officers (as seen in Guild statements) believe themselves to be not a civilian service agency but a military occupation force, battling those heathen liberals n’ minorities for the glory of Limbaugh-land, not much will really change.