Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> But again, to call the US a "police state" is really like calling us a 
> "socialist state" because we now have affordable health care.  It's 
> hyperbole at the best.

The TSA all in itself doesn't make the US police-state-like, but it
adds up to everything else.

It seems to be that, at least at some places, there's a strong "us vs them"
mentality among the police force, and they act as if they were a military
force within a foreign and potentially hostile land.

They are extremely trigger-happy and will pull out guns and tasers at
the slightest of provocation, or even without, but just if they feel
like it. They can legally lie to people, and trick people into
implicating themselves. They regularly abuse people with impunity.

Time and again we get news about new cases of police brutality. While
that alone doesn't yet make it a police state, what does is that they
usually get scot-free. Their buddies will support them and lie for them,
even under oath, and their superiors are not eager to start internal
investigations. Such investigations are generally started only if the
event gets wide publicity, and even then the punishments are often
extremely lenient or even non-existent.

The cases that get publicity are probably just the tip of the iceberg.
There just *happened* to be a camera pointing that way, or someone with
a camera who didn't have it immediately confiscated afterward. How many
such cases are happening where there are no cameras and no credible
witnesses? In these cases it's usually the word of the victim vs. the
word of a half-dozen police officers (all of who, naturally, agree that
no abuse happened, of course.)

If the government just watches by while all this is happening, rather
than taking stern actions to eradicate these abuses, what else is that
other than being police-state-like?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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