One the things that cured me of my conservatism was the realization (or epiphany) that our government’s legal system is set up to operate like a police state. This includes the police and any other law enforcement agencies, the system of due process, and the punishments issued out for law-breaking. To top that off, we honor the people in these professions, as if they are some kind of angels doing God’s work, but the god they serve is not the one true God.
Firstly, our police force across the nation is out of control. Everyday I read stories of misconduct that occur all over the country, and these are the stories that are reported by the press. I’m certain that it’s a small fraction of the true number of misconduct that permeates the police force. Now, I’m not saying they are all bad and corrupt, in fact I’m sure many police officers are like you and me in that they are decent people who are just looking out for their respective communities. But the fact that most police officers who are the bad ones tend to get only a slap on the wrist from the higher ups and sent back on to the street should give us an idea of the darker nature of law enforcement. When you have an organization that refuses to reprimand its own properly while insisting on providing the populace with a service by their own force, you have what is reflective of a criminal organization. This may be why the police don’t like the mafia so much in that they don’t like the competition.
To top it off, there are several levels of law enforcement in the United States, not a single police force. While this has ensured that a total takeover of law enforcement by a single person or organization has been kept at bay, it creates a lot more conflicts than it should. The television show South Park has parodied this more often than note, the most recent example was the 24 parody where the anti-terrorism unit kept on being taken over by different agencies to the point that a child could take it over and no authority questioned it. But the real problem lies with how a local or state law enforcement officer can have his or her common sense be overridden by a Federal agent who doesn’t even live anywhere close to the incident’s area.
The other side of this is that many police organizations have a kind of brotherhood that makes them into a kind of secret society where outsiders are rarely given the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, most police officers assume guilt before innocent, especially when it comes to certain kinds of crimes and are all too willing to destroy people’s lives in their zeal for some misguided sense of duty and honor. Even when people are found innocent after the long and expensive process of litigation (more on that later), the police force will never admit they did anything wrong. Heck, even when they are caught doing something wrong, they won’t admit to doing something wrong half the time.
The police themselves are only a part of the problem, however. In fact, they are only the people who bag and tag the populace, and often times get away with. The truth is, most smaller communities don’t need a permanent police force, or a very large one, and the entire population doesn’t need a police force that goes out actively searching for potential criminals. Crime prevention is not their job, it is their job to clean up the messes after the crime; the job of crime prevention is reserved to you and me by protecting ourselves. Of course, that’s also why most police chiefs hate it when you or I use a gun to kill a criminal attacker. After all, they don’t like it when outsiders do their job for them.
Still, though, there is more to a police state than a corrupt and overreaching law enforcement system. In the United States, it involves a legal process as well that enjoys just as much unconstitutional behavior and labyrinthine regulations that make law enforcement look simple by comparison.