2020 will be remembered for a lot of things, however not many of them will be good. Two incidents stand out which had serious repercussions on the nation as a whole: the death of George Floyd, and the pandemic. Both occurrences have influenced the country greatly, but the incident with the greatest impact on this particular situation is the untimely death of George Floyd.

Beyond the massive protests, movements and public demonstrations that this particular incident sparked, there's an overall effect the police force as a whole must consider. Since the incident there has been public outcry for the police force to be drastically defunded. Several states have taken varying degrees of action to implement these processes.

Some cities have taken this request a few steps further. Washington, D.C. for example has been pushing to exert disciplinary actions on offending officers and make them public record.

Councilman Charles Allen introduced a bill that made it a legal requirement that records of sanctions to a particular officer be made readily accessible by the public. This has been done in an effort to increase transparency. Many of these actions hold merit in the current police system, however some of these precautions actively victimize members of the police force. Granting public access to records of prior disciplinary actions taken against serving officers of the law not only infringes strongly on the privacy of these officers, it diminishes their essential ability as officers to carry out the law. Access to these records bears no practical fruits as all it does is undermine the authority of police officers trying to do their duty.

More than this, it will encourage a witch hunt and foster an even deeper distrust of officers of the law. From the beginning, these records have been kept private. Rationally, this is not to keep the misdeeds of the officers hidden but to ensure that there are no loopholes that individuals with less than honorable intentions can exploit.

Accountability is one thing. No individual or entity should be above that. However, publicizing such intimate information moves beyond transparency, and actively persecutes individuals who are simply trying to do the best they can to uphold the #law.

This bill should not have been allowed to pass or even be seriously considered, as it is detrimental to society as a whole.