Police state

Police state
Wikipedia terms a police state as a "fundamentally authoritarian" form of government, and cites examples of the Soviet Union and its satellites plus North Korea. No mention in the article of the 21st century global shift towards authoritarian policies by the so-called Western democracies, such as the gutting of civil liberties and the use of the mass surveillance programmes and false flag terror.

Official Narrative

The paler the better - The official narrative of state freedom

The diagrams on the Wikipedia Police state page provide an exemplary illustration of which governments the official narrative declares to be police states. As of February 2014 the results of The Economist's Democracy Index survey for 2010 were presented with the sole description "Democracy Index 2010" on the main page. The USA ranks as a "full democracy", at the opposite end of the spectrum from the "Authoritarian regimes" in Africa and the Middle East.

War on terror

Full article: War on terror

The "War on terror" is increasingly used as justification by governments introduction of a police state.

Rollback of Civil Liberties

Periods of detention without trial have been lengthened, the right to silence curtailed or completely removed and legal restrictions on searches increasingly ignored, sometimes without even attempt at due process. Secret or juryless trials are increasingly being discussed in UK and other countries, and in June 2014, it emerged that the UK government had been trying to carry out a major "terrorism trial" in secrecy, without even naming the defendants.

US

#Prisoners per 100,000 as of 2012

The USA has over 700 prisoners per 100,000 ciizens, the highest incarceration rate in the world. Around half of prisoners are locked up due to the war on drugs and thousands of prisoners face life behind bars for non-violent offences. Many commentators agree that USA is a police state, including:

• Police State USA, a continuously updated multi-contributor site with news on the emergence of a naked police state in USA.
• FilmingCops.com, which has a lot of recent reports and some videos of aggression by US police

Unchecked police violence

In the process of attacking the Occupy Wall St protests, widespread illegal violence by the police was carried out and went more or less unpunished.

In December 2013, no less than 23 police officers fired at least 377 rounds at an immobilised car in what CBS described as a "shooting frenzy", killing the (unarmed) occupants and injuring others in the crossfire.

In April 2014 it was reported that Police in Georgia forced a group of fifth graders to the ground at gunpoint as they attempted to build a tree fort in their own neighborhood. As the children lay face down, the officer allegedly screamed profanities and demanded they spread their arms and legs. The children's parent filed a complaint but the officer concerned remains on duty.

In May 2014, a US police officer shot a 70 year old man at a traffic stop. He was placed on unpaid leave, but a spokesman defended the shooting as “appropriate” because the officer “felt an imminent threat to his life” - the man was getting out of his car and reaching for a cane in the truck bed.

Repeated incidents reveal that "less lethal" weapons such as tasers are being used to torture or kill members of the US public by unrepentant (and commonly unpunished) police.

Pre-crime profiling

In 2014, Chicago police began use of a system not based on evidence of criminal activity but a computer based data mining approach that predicts crime probabilities.

Property confiscation

The IRS has begun to use confiscate money based solely on suspicion, without specifying a criminal charge, effectively rendering people guilty until they can prove themselves (at their own expense) innocent.

Military hardware rollout

Full article: Militarization of Police

Particularly in US, domestic law enforcement is making increasing use of military hardware. In 2014 the US government announced that it would be equipping police forces with 13,000 Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) units that were used in the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, while the LA police department announed it would start using unmanned aerial drones. The Department of Homeland Security has similarly been stocking up on ammunition and has several bullets for every man, man and child in the USA, including hollow points bullets which are illegal for use on the battlefield, but well purposed for use in urban environments since they explode on impact, causing maximum target damage but minimum property damage.

External links

• The Rutherford Institute — a non-profit civil liberties organization based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founder and president John W. Whitehead believes that the U.S. is an "emerging" police state.
• Council for Secular Humanism article describing attributes of police states
• David Mery, September 22, 2005; The Guardian — example of "police state" defined in a modern context.