Police State?

Yes, I begin this post with a question mark, but a number of news stories over the past few months have made me wonder if I should follow such a phrase with an exclamation mark. The Occupy Wall Street movement has certainly brought the police force out in numbers in cities around our country. Yes, in Oakland, CA, a few fringe folks in a recent peaceful demonstration turned more violent, but the OWS movement is committed to peace. So why did the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security personnel infiltrate the Nashville, Tennessee OWS? 

Nashville's The Tenneseean obtained e-mails that reveal that State Highway Patrol troopers were taken off their highway duty to infiltrate Nashville's OWS. And one policeman revealed his own attitude in one of those e-mails: “If they start camping, I’m confident that a public health issue will soon develop...Then the Health Dept. can shut it down and we all look like the good guys.”

One Occupy Nashville protester wonders:  "My question in response would be : ‘Why are they messing with such a peaceful protest in such a warlike manner. Why declare war on peace?'"

This is what I think is the answer to that question: Too often it seems that the police have a pre-existing bias against groups that assemble to protest peacefully, especially if those groups are full of young people or minorities. And that attitude has been aided and abetted by Homeland Security. Ever since 9/11, police departments around the country have been highly weaponized, and I think this encourages a certain mindset--a tendency to use excess force in dealing with ordinary situations, of seeing the public as "them," even when the "them" is not much of a threat.

Just recently, a sheriff's office in Conroe, Texas, obtained an unmanned Shadowhawk helicopter that could carry a weapons payload. Yes, that's right--an unmanned drone with the potential to carry weapons. Why does Conroe, Texas, need an unmanned, weaponized drone? Nearby Cut-and-Shoot isn't that much of a threat, is it?

The drone can also look into people's backyards and has infrared capabilities to see into homes.

Police might have the best intentions, but even the best intentions can deteriorate into untenable consequences that challenge our civil rights--or worse.

Updates

• "But many law enforcement experts said Thursday that the officers' tactics appeared to be a severe overreaction." (Berkeley)-- "UC cops' use of batons on Occupy camp questioned," Will Kane, Demian Bulwa,  SF Gate, San Francisco Chronicle, 11 November 2011.

• "Portland Pepper Spray Incident Generates Iconic Occupy Photo," Las Angeles Times, 18 November 2011.

• "Pepper-Spray Brutality at UC Davis," posted on James Fallows' blog at The Atlantic,  19 November 2011.

• "#OccupyMissoula--Police Dropping Off Drunken, Hostile People," posted on Plutocracy Files 19 November 2011.  (h/t David Crisp)

• "How the War on Terror Has Militarized the Police," Arthur Rizer and Joseph Hartman, The Atlantic 7 November 2011. (h/t James Fallows)

• "Turning Patrolmen into Soldiers: How did we let this happen?," posted on James Fallows' blog at The Atlantic, 21 November 2011.