Public safety requires that all police be persuaded to disregard this simple sequence of messages recently broadcast to each of them by St. Louis County District Attorney Bob McCullough:
1. You are free to kill a man if
your sincere impression is that
he is a scary thug.
2. Your impression’s sincerity will be more easily believed
if the man cannot testify
to his actions or character or
to his impression of your actions or scariness to him.
You can most reliably prevent his testimony by killing him.
3. Remember points 1 & 2 whenever you suspect that a man's testimony might
“threaten the safety”
of your body, self-image, reputation, career, pension or staying out of prison…
These incentives need to be reversed, so that every policeman is always thinking, per
Ian Reifowitz's diary here:
"I don’t want to shoot you..."
The universal police body cameras supported in that diary, and by Michael Brown's family, along with improving the outcomes of investigations and trials, and incentivizing better behavior by police, suspects and bystanders, might have their most fundamental impact in helping to reverse the above incentives.