The current moderators are few in number and might have to deal with a lot of posts being reported on a daily basis.
Although, it has been stated by a few moderators recently that their workload is high right now I'm not sure whether they mean that their queues are large or that there just isn't enough time in the day to actually deal with all the posts are they come across. I think it was hilariousandco that recently said he's only dealing with reports in the queue these days rather than finding and dealing with posts himself. I may be mistaken in this though and I'll try to find the post in which he stated this.
Having special privileges doled out to some legendary users and hero members for a start would lessen the load from those moderators and make up for some increased oversight of the reported activity. Since the members who are given privileges also faces risk of losing out on their ranks and merits, it won't be abused by them to carry out any personal vendetta against users who differ with their opinion.
Being a higher ranked member doesn't really mean you know the rules enough in order to enforce them and doesn't make you trustworthy either. The same as reporting a lot doesn't make you trustworthy and judging by how long it takes to handle the reports that I put in it doesn't seem there's too much of a issue with dealing with reports that are in the queue, because it's much less time consuming than the moderators looking for them and dealing with them that way. This could just be because my timezone overlaps with a few others too but, at the most it's a few hours for myself.