What does a police state look like?
Violence, arrests of Occupy protesters and stop-and-frisk. Plus: A worshipful media
BY DAVID SIROTA
Salon.com
TUESDAY, FEB 12, 2013
What does a police state really look like in practice in America? Is it the cartoonish dystopia of sci-fi books? Is it like 1998′s “The Siege,” which predicted a wholesale instatement of martial law? Or in the age of the drone-wielding police department, is it something more mundane and subtle yet nonetheless pernicious? From this city in the middle of Middle America, it looks like the latter.
When people think of Denver, many think of skiing and, since the last election, marijuana. But from here in the Mile High City, things seem a bit different. In the day to day operation of the city, we aren’t as much defined by snow and pot as we are by the fact that we live under the rule of an increasingly brutal police force. It is a police force that our political leaders are more than happy to deploy to punish undesirables, and worse, that the most powerful media organ is more than happy to defend.
We have become, in short, a national cautionary tale — one that no doubt epitomizes similar trends throughout the country.
This sad situation has been long in the making. Over the last decade, while then-Mayor John Hickenlooper was gaining national plaudits for his geek-scientist charm, he was overseeing a police department that has become so violent toward citizens, that the U.S. Department of Justice is now considering a formal civil rights investigation. In all, a Cato Institute study shows that in terms of official misconduct, Denver’s police force is the sixth worst in the entire country.
The highest-profile incidents tell the bigger story.
The Rest…HERE
