How could the United Police States of America possibly make police less accountable? By keeping their names secret for 60 days after shooting somebody, which is what Arizona is moving to do:
Critics call Senate Bill 1445 an attack on government transparency at a time when American police departments are trying to earn the public’s trust after a series of controversial shootings.
The bill would prevent law enforcement agencies statewide from releasing the names of police officers “involved in a use of deadly physical force incident that results in death or serious physical injury” for 60 days.
Why 60 days? Because that’s more than enough time for the story to fall off of the media’s radar. In fact 60 days is overkill since the media forgets about stories about two weeks after they happen in most cases. Regardless this bill would ensure that when people learn the identify of the shooter it will have little in the way of consequence. At most it will get a mention on the back page of a newspaper section under a generic title such as “Identify of police officer released.”