Tigers Reflect On The Price of Police Presence in America
When hearing the phrase “Police State” many would immediately be lead to think of countries in history like Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Communist U.S.S.R. However, would you stop and think to yourself that maybe the United States has become one? At first that statement would seem out of place; no way could the United States be tied to Nazi Germany. Yet, at the same time, groups like the National Security Agency (or NSA) have collected massive amounts of information off the Internet about what you have been searching, and even have run into problems of looking into peoples private email accounts.
Now, the NSA is meant to protect and collect data to stop future terrorist attacks and to protect the American population, but is it still protecting us if we lose some of our founding principles? Do American citizens have the right to look at what they want, and to have the privacy of their emails? Many would argue that that is their basic rights as an American citizen, yet the NSA has broken those rights more than once.
Nonetheless, these actions would not be enough to consider the United States as a Police State.
However, what about the Stop and Frisk law in New York, where police can stop you and search you for weapons and contraband without a warrant or reasonable suspicion. Many of these individuals that were stopped were either of African-American or Latino descent. This can lead many to believe that racial discrimination is still a very large problem. Yet, is racial discrimination one of the tell-tale signs of a Police State? Many call this law “racial profiling” instead of trying to keep the streets of New York cities safe.
This, once again many would argue, is the loss of basic, personal freedoms. However, it is allowed due to “protecting the greater good”.
The police have always meant to “protect and serve” the people of America. Yet, in recent years, they have started to take on a more military role in society than one protecting the people of America.
Just look at the use of force by the American police departments, and the amount of times that the force used could be considered “excessive force”. The German police department in 2011 shot a total of 85 shots all together, 46 which were warning shoots fired up into the air [as reported on NBC News].
Now, you could make the argument that Germany is much, much smaller than the United States, however, in 2012 alone the NYPD shot a total of 331 shoots [as reported by New York Magazine]. This one city alone shot more bullets than a whole country did. These statistics show that there is a major issue of excessive use of force in our police department.
Bill Maher, a political commentator, said, “This country is becoming a police state and it is very troubling to me.”
On April 15, 2013 a tragic event happened in Boston where two pressure cooker bombs went off, killing 3 and injuring more than 264. What is scarier though, is the next 2 days in which a huge manhunt occurred to find the two bombers. The frightening thing about this is even though the bombing was a horrific and terrible event, the city of Boston was shut down essentially to try and find the bombers. These actions set a danger precedent for future terror attacks in which whole cities can now be shut down.
Nonetheless, what is more frightening than all of this is how the Boston Police Department reacted to this attack. For those two days Boston could have looked like a frontline town in a war. Half-tracks carrying police armed with automatic machine guns and armored Humvees raced down the streets as they searched for the bombers. When did the police force need to have Half-tracks and Humvees, which you would only consider the Untied States military to need.
Maher said, “The police are becoming militarized.”
What needs to be asked is, are we a police state? Or have we always been one?
The Illinois State Police and Urbana Police Departments were contacted but the Echo was unable to reach them for comment.
About The Author
