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42 ¦ AUGUST 10, 2020 CLOSING ARGUMENTS

EDITORIAL BOARD

Anonymous, Unaccountable Police Must
Not Be Tolerated in Our Society

Federal police line up in Washington, D.C. amid mass demonstrations

I following the death of George Floyd.
n the early evening of June 1, when an assort- Somebody should.
ment of unidentifiable federal officers began The instant that riot police conceal their name
to descend on peaceful protesters in Lafayette tags, something very wrong happens—even be-
Park, across from the White House, they didn’t fore a single skull is cracked. Our system of checks
need to rip off their name badges to be anony- and balances becomes unchecked and unbalanced
mous—because, unlike city and state police, they when raw power can be exerted without fear of
never had name badges in the first place. consequences. Not only are the out-of-control
The demonstrators and media couldn’t find out “bad apples” insulated from criminal or civil cor-
what military force or agency they represented. rection, their own supervisors and superiors are
MSNBC Reporter Garrett Haake tweeted from left in the dark.
the scene, “Federal law enforcement of some kind, Federal law enforcement agents are different
but they won’t identify themselves, and all insig- from the 700,000-plus state and local police offi-
nias and name plates have been removed.” cers who typically wear identifying uniforms and
It’s not federal policy to have ID badges, At- name badges. When last counted, in 2016, there
torney General William Barr explained later in a were 132,000 such federal agents, according to
news conference, adding that he had no problem the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Most are within
with that. the Department of Justice, the Department of

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