As Americans are questioning NSA's mass domestic surveillance and police abuses of power, some organizations and political individuals are concerned about police militarization and that America may become a police state.
The release of the 2014 American Civil Liberties Union report,
"War Comes Home," raised awareness of significant signs that indicate U.S. police militarization.
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Here are five signs the U.S. is fighting a war on terror against itself:
1. “The impunity of police power.”
Clive Crook
in Bloomberg View cited Ferguson, Missouri, as a prime example of an American police state. Crook argued the officer involved in shooting Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, should have been brought to trial, and the judicial “system now borders on the tyrannical, and ought to scare all Americans, regardless of skin color.”
2. Racial prejudice.
America has long been a police state for many – people of color, LGBT, and the poor, wrote Gene Robinson
on The Daily Beast. Robinson pointed out that these excessive and quick-moving instances of police arrests and brutality are only getting more national recognition following Ferguson. He cited a video from St. Paul, Minnesota, in which a young black man waiting to pick up his children after school was harassed by police, tased, and arrested. All charges were later dropped in the incident.
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3. Exceptions to the Fourth Amendment.
In
American Thinker, Mark Fitzgibbons expressed concern over the decline of Fourth Amendment rights and evidence that it has been gutted by those in power. Fitzgibbons argued "reclaiming the Fourth Amendment is essential to retaining our exceptionalism that flows from freedom."
Fitzgibbons said that as the Fourth Amendment continues to be circumvented, America becomes more of a police state, and adds that already we live in a "soft police state."
4. An Extension of the American Military Empire in a Police-Industrial Complex.
“The outlook for civil liberties grows bleaker by the day, from the government’s embrace of indefinite detention for US citizens and armed surveillance drones flying overhead to warrantless surveillance of phone, email, and Internet communications, and prosecutions of government whistle-blowers. The homeland is ruled by a police-industrial complex,” wrote constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead in his
book "Battlefield America."
5. A "warrior" mentality.
The
American Civil Liberties Union described current police training as creating a "warrior mentality." In its report "War Comes Home," the ACLU wrote, "Our analysis shows that the militarization of American policing is evident in the training that police officers receive, which encourages them to adopt a 'warrior' mentality and think of the people they are supposed to serve as enemies, as well as in the equipment they use, such as battering rams, flashbang grenades, and APCs."
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