Coming within days of each other, the grand jury decisions not to indict the police officers responsible for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have produced a genuine crisis in American policing. Its defenders are scrambling to hold onto whatever fraying threads of legitimacy remain.

Last week, in response to the wave of protests in Ferguson following the grand jury announcement, an unprecedented meeting brought grassroots anti-police-brutality activists into the same room with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Attorney General Eric Holder. Out of this and other discussions, Obama emerged with a set of proposals he hopes will restore confidence in law enforcement, including a pilot program for fifty thousand police to wear body cameras, a review of how local police departments utilize military equipment, and a new commission to study policing and community relations.

The announcement from the White House barely had time to make a ripple before the non-indictment of Garner’s killer reduced the plan to a pile of junk. In one stroke, the idea that body cameras would make a decisive difference in whether a police officer would be held responsible for the death of an innocent and unarmed person collapsed — and with it, the centerpiece of Obama’s reforms.