The issue is that a lot of us don’t think that that precinct was in any actual danger of falling.
Maybe. If there is no reasonable way to safely move the sensitive material to someplace safe. Of course, the set of situations ever where that would be the case and it would be even practical to destroy the material rather than abandoning it to effect a safe retreat is really stunningly narrow. You can construct highly-contrived scenarios, but...
So, we actually do know that the 2nd precinct never came anywhere close to falling. The question now is whether they’re lying about destroying evidence maliciously, or lying about having panicked.
The police are fundamentally different from the US Marines in almost all ways, in practice and in reality.
My position is that there is NEVER a situation where it makes more sense for the police to devote manpower to destroying evidence over restoring order. Police agencies shredding files on the way out the door are, historically, not doing it to protect anyone but themselves.
Either way, it’s pretty clear that Precinct 2 never got anywhere close to such a convoluted hypothetical. That leaves the question why they did it, to which I believe the Roman jurors said it best: cui bono?
> IN LIGHT OF RECENTLY ESTABLISHED CROSS-AGENCY REPORTING REQUIREMENTS PERTAINING TO ISSUES SURROUNDING THE LOSS OR BREACH OF PERSONAL INFORMATION BY FEDERAL AGENCIES, THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET HAS ESTABLISHED ONE STANDARD TO DESCRIBE PERSONAL DATA.
I don't think I'd want to be tried on evidence that fell into the hands of protestors or rioters. Provenance is a pretty important part of the evidence of any court case.
It's probably safe to assume that they have confidential informants at play that could be involved in serious crimes like human trafficking or drug trafficking. The consequences for this data getting in the wrong hands would be life and death.
Whether you want to call the people who would do bad things with that information an "enemy" or not I think is entirely up to you, but at the very least you could think of it as risk-mitigation.
It also seems the government has some amount of intent to try to contain the leakage of PII, however ineffective they may be at it aside, given this statement
> IN LIGHT OF RECENTLY ESTABLISHED CROSS-AGENCY REPORTING REQUIREMENTS PERTAINING TO ISSUES SURROUNDING THE LOSS OR BREACH OF PERSONAL INFORMATION BY FEDERAL AGENCIES