Why limit it to slashdot posters? In the wikipedia era where expertise is mocked and everybody’s opinion is just as good as anyone else’s, it’s even more common for someone who knows more than anyone on earth about the mating habits of the northern mockingbird to assume their political, economic and social opinions are just as learned.
Heinlein put it best, I think.
Rule of thumb: If you can make the assertion that you are in a police state and not be arrested then you probably aren’t in a police state.
My dad lived in Eastern Europe from 1931 (when he was born) until 1956 (when he escaped – and that’s the word he would use). He could tell you what a real police state is like. No, the United States is not a police state.
I’ve got seven guns, I’m not a cop. If its a police state then they are keeping it a secret.
Agreed: that there are actual cases of police brutality, excessive use of force, unnecessary use of firearms, fraudulent arrest, corruption, etc. is not denied. There are a handful of bad cops out there. But U.S. civic police forces are pretty well regulated, pretty well governed, mostly transparent, almost always overseen by non-police “citizens’ commissions” and the like. To say “They’re all bad” is, as you note, worse than pointless: it undermines legitimate efforts to improve the actual situation. It promotes the hardening of the “blue line,” by forcing good policemen on the defensive. (Just as, in a real police state, it hardens civic resentment by treating innocent people as guilty.)
In Seattle, they never even make it TO the criminal court, that is exactly my complaint.
Blakeyrat: Is there no regulation, no oversight, no police commission, no internal affairs investigation, no mayor, no city council, no state legislature, no governor, no federal attorneys, no FBI, no ACLU, no newspaper, no watchdog function at all in Seattle? If the police are this bad, why haven’t the people elected “new broom” politicians to control them? Why haven’t lawsuits been filed against the controlling institutions for failing to control them?
I know that things can seem pretty awful. Here in Southern California, there have been too many well-documented cases of police brutality. However, these are major causes celebre, (yeah, I had to look up the spelling) and have resulted in many changes in high level police personnel. No few Police Chiefs have gone on to other professions (Daryl Gates was almost as bad a radio talk show host as he was a C.O.P.)
My point is, this isn’t a police state, and when there are bad policemen – and I will take on faith from your posts that there are problems in Seattle – there are solutions. We’re still a democracy, and the police are governed by non-police institutions.
I wouldn’t use the term “police state” as in Nazi Germany, but the US does have high rates of incarceration, and those citizen review boards that have been mentioned are rather feckless. I know from personal experience that any cop can pull you off the road for a minor traffic violation and have you detained in jail for up to 48 hours without conviction based solely on “probable cause” which can be as simple as “he looks like a dang hippy” (or black or hispanic if the cop is racist). Also, much of the legislation over the past decade’s War On Terror has expanded police powers, and the Obama administration generally continues it.
[quote=“GreenElf, post:48, topic:643964”]
I know from personal experience that any cop can pull you off the road for a minor traffic violation and have you detained in jail for up to 48 hours without conviction based solely on “probable cause” which can be as simple as “he looks like a dang hippy” (or black or hispanic if the cop is racist).[/QUOTE
This is not legal in PA, and I very much doubt that it is legal in any other state.
[quote=“gms453, post:49, topic:643964”]
[quote=“GreenElf, post:48, topic:643964”]
I know from personal experience that any cop can pull you off the road for a minor traffic violation and have you detained in jail for up to 48 hours without conviction based solely on “probable cause” which can be as simple as “he looks like a dang hippy” (or black or hispanic if the cop is racist).
[/QUOTE
This is not legal in PA, and I very much doubt that it is legal in any other state.[/QUOTE]
I can assure you it happens frequently, and it happened to me. The cops don’t do a drug test right there at the scene. They use their subjective evaluation of whether the driver is on drugs, based on questioning and field tests, and arrest under “probable cause”. My attorney told me he never met anyone who passed a field test. I was never read Miranda rights. Part of their factual data was redness of my eyes, but I told them that I wore contact lenses the night before. Such questioning can include asking what part of town you live in, telling you there was a drug bust at that motel the other day, etc. Certainly my attorney, the civil rights attorney that wasn’t interested in my case and others didn’t tell me otherwise. I later found that one of the arresting cops has been brought before a civil review board by another arrestee, but was not punished.
The arrested person may be released “on their own recognizance” after fingerprints etc but before being detained, but that decision is up to the cops. If not released, the arrested person serves up to 48 hours in jail, without seeing an attorney or being brought before a judge, unless the person pays a bail amount or calls an attorney who pays the bail amount. I didn’t pay the $200 bail amount because I’m not naturally inclined to pay $200 and didn’t think they would actually put me in jail for any amount of time let alone 48 hours. I would have had to hire an attorney or bailor to pay it for me since I didn’t have it in my wallet. My knowledge of these matters was nil, so I didn’t know about the option of calling a bailor to get bailed out.
I asked a question to a prison guard at the municipal jail (think it was “when am I’m getting out?”) and he asked me to fill out a “complaint form”, then I was transferred in a “chain gang” (handcuffs linked to several prisoners in row) to a barbed wire prison where I spent the New Years weekend. I had no prior record, and my record is still clean. My only other traffic infraction was speeding 5 mph over the limit. My case never went to trial for lack of evidence. I should have only been written a minor traffic ticket, but they didn’t write me a ticket opting solely to press DUI drugs charges. I was never administered a breathalyzer test although the arresting cops questioned me at length about any alcohol consumption.
Spurious arrest isn’t legal…but it’s also very hard to prove in court. A policeman can say, with a straight face, “He matched the description of a suspect,” and use that as the justification for an otherwise wholly baseless arrest. Until a pattern of such abuses is clear, the courts can’t act. The excuse provides sufficient deniability.
How do you know this happens frequently? What state and county were you in when this happened to you? What action did you or that atty you talked to take to rectify this grave injustice?
I believe it happens frequently because the cops have considerable judgment to exercise in these matters. Probable cause is based on their opinion regarding bloodshot eyes and field sobriety tests and their opinion may be based on biases against certain people. I’m white, but now I see what minorities face every day. Most of my life, I’ve had short hair and didn’t have any incidents with a cop, but my hair was long at the time so I was deemed outside the parameters of normal. As long as I keep my hair short, I’m just another dude and the cops will mainly only arrest me if they have some proof. Minorities can’t just keep their hair short to avoid police harassment. I was living and working in a metro area. I wasn’t aware of “false arrest” at the time, and these type of cops probably target people who don’t have awareness of their rights and people who don’t seem rich enough to pursue a lawsuit. There’s many arrests that don’t lead to conviction or even a trial but don’t get reported in the media.
We are not a police state to the definition that citizen spy on each other, government openly violate people’s right and people accepts this violation as normal part of life.
However we do have a lot of retarded laws and regulations that make no sense and does more harm than good. We also have many retarded laws that are biased towards a certain class of the society or benefits a certainly class of society, and this practice doesn’t look like it will end soon.
But I think, it is very possible for US to became a police state, because the general population lacks the ability to do critical thinking and are too easily effected by the “free media” which is nothing but free.
If this is the definition, then the answer to the question is a resounding HELL, NO.
I’ve heard some right wing blowhards say, “We haven’t had to throw over any tyrannical governments yet. So obviously the 2nd amendment is working.”
What is your response to that?
“You’ll get that GED one day.”
We did have that little Civil War thing…but it wasn’t fought with privately owned weaponry. We did participate in the overthrowing of two very large tyrannical governments – Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany – and, once more, privately owned arms played almost no role at all.
I guess I’d be more impressed if small personal firearms had prevented Tojo and Hitler from taking power, or had been used to remove them.
Well, the people of Iraq were heavily armed which is why they were never ruled for several decades by a totalitarian dictator.
Do you have any evidence that “the people” of Iraq were heavily armed?