If someone is beating me, I'm not likely to be able to focus on his number and memorize it. When a thug put his gun in my face to rob me, I later could describe the gun in great detail, but not his face.
I'm not sure how this conversation changed to talk about police brutality, but I think the argument is that if there is a bystander watching or recording, the police officer can later be identified.
Compare to a situation in which identification is not required and the officer can't be identified even with video evidence.
I don’t think we’re discussing police brutality here, not that it isn’t terrible and more common than it should be. I live in King County and every week it seems some person assaults another for little to no reason (often with a hilarious number of priors) and walks the same night. That is the violent crime that isn’t prosecuted here that the GP was referring to.
