Being able to lose the paper trail is a feature, not a bug, so a system like that would never be implemented.

The police exist to protect the property and station of those in power. It's why New York City was able to function without a police department until the 1840s while the New York Fire Department can trace its history back to the 1640s.

New York had 180 police officers (marshals and local policemen, and before that, night watchmen) way before the NYPD was established - they were just not organised in one big hierarchy because most crime was local before the mid-19th century immigration wave.

The issue was not the internal communication within the police. For that there was a complete paper trail. But the top police officers got their instructions from somewhere; probably high ranking civil servants, spin doctors or maybe even politicians in the then government. Those communications were gone.

Really for cases like this the only way through is the Nuremberg one: "only following orders" is not a defence, especially if you can't or won't say who gave the order.

> “no officer had a case to answer for misconduct or gross misconduct.”

Pretty suggestive that in this case, the police were able to demonstrate a binding order from someone who was not an 'officer'.

A public anything would be helpful; you don’t need a blockchain because there’s a single publisher.

Or, instead of blockchain, a simple API.

how?