Matthew Yglesias at Vox brings up an important question.
Above you’ll see a picture of Scott Olson, the Getty photographer who’s brought us many of the most striking images of protests and police crackdown that followed the shooting of Michael Brown. [Click on the link in my first sentence to see the picture]
The other two men in the photograph have not yet been identified to the public. […] Reasonable people can disagree about when, exactly, it’s appropriate for cops to fire tear gas into crowds. But there’s really no room for disagreement about when it’s reasonable for officers of the law to take off their badges and start policing anonymously.
There’s only one reason to do this: to evade accountability for your actions.
Olson was released shortly after his arrest, as were Reilly and Lowery before him. Ryan Devereaux from The Intercept and Lukas Hermsmeier from the German tabloid Bild were likewise arrested last night and released without charges after an overnight stay in jail. In other words, they never should have been arrested in the first place. But nothing’s being done to punish the mystery officers who did the arresting.
[…]
Policing without a nametag can help you avoid accountability from the press or from citizens, but it can’t possibly help you avoid accountability from the bosses.
For that you have to count on an atmosphere of utter impunity. It’s a bet many cops operating in Ferguson are making, and it seems to be a winning bet.
Let’s get this out of the way. I am not anti-police. I am a cop’s kid. So… I called my father and asked him about police not wearing identification. Yep, that’s a big no no. The public has a right to know who’s arresting them. What happens if a person being arrested has a complaint about the way an officer handled the arrest? How would they file that complaint without the officer’s name?
Here’s the bottom line. The police have the power to arrest/detain citizens. They also have the power to use lethal force. With those powers come responsibility, accountability and transparency. I’m sorry, but that is not debatable.
Removing identification doesn’t inspire trust in Ferguson/St. Louis law enforcement (Is there much trust left?). In fact, it plays into the narrative that the police in Ferguson are functioning with impunity.