I agree it's an odd wording. Giving the author the benefit of the doubt, however, I might interpret it to mean that it's essential for continued public trust in law enforcement that rights violations are dealt due process, particularly when they are national spectacles.
Public trust in law enforcement should be preserved, especially when they are national spectacles? Why? Law enforcement agencies of the government are fascinating, but I do not see why they or any other arm of the government must be preserved; the citizens are what matter, not the government.
Public trust is essential for law enforcement to function efficiently. Trust in the legitimacy of government and other members of society is inversely correlated with crime and corruption.
This is not to say that trust causes lower crime rates, but when agents of the government behave in ways that break trust and jeopardize the legitimacy of their station, the public is less willing to cooperate and more likely to operate outside of the system of law. Therefore, what is essential is that law enforcement act in ways that preserves trust, especially when the eyes of the nation are upon them. Trust and government behaviour form a feedback loop, such that if either one is maligned, it can disturb the stability of the entire system.
I agree citizens are what matter, and that no government agency should be legitimized merely by its own existence. However, I do believe that the enforcement of the law leads to more optimal societal configurations than the Nash equilibrium. I'm not arguing for the preservation of a corrupt and self-serving government agency, I'm arguing that an institution which behaves in a manner that the public can trust will lead to greater utility for society.
The logic is that public trust needs to be preserved for cops to do their jobs. If they are national spectacles than they are not going to be able to do the job the citizens who pay for government expect.
Its basically an alternate way of saying the police must be clean. Sadly, some politicians forget that in order to respect police we need to see them as non-corrupt. They just expect blind trust.
Because it's a feedback loop. The effectiveness of government agencies to do their jobs serving citizens is related to how much citizens trust them to do that job. If you don't trust cops to protect you, you won't call them when there's something bad going on, thus they won't be able to protect you. It seems to me that you can, in principle, reach the point of so little trust being given to the system that the system suddenly disassembles.
If public trust is an important part of effective and good governance, it's important to combat the efforts to destroy it, especially if we're talking about some statistically insignificant infractions being blown by journalists out of proportion, like it seems to be e.g. with the police brutality issue in the US.
