> If police is corrupt and want someone to disappear they just won't create arrest records
Departments routinely doing this get caught. (They have.)
Of course if it’s corrupt all the way up you’re screwed. But the aim is to create grappling points for the Feds and state Attorneys General on e.g. city cops. Showing a pattern of undocumented arrests or of the arrested going missing is easier when arrest records are public.
It’s a tradeoff between the power of the state over the public versus the power of the public over itself.
Departments routinely doing this get caught. (They have.)
Of course if it’s corrupt all the way up you’re screwed. But the aim is to create grappling points for the Feds and state Attorneys General on e.g. city cops. Showing a pattern of undocumented arrests or of the arrested going missing is easier when arrest records are public.
It’s a tradeoff between the power of the state over the public versus the power of the public over itself.