Emory police chief facebook post.

[stavos]

I guess I'll have to get the inscription on my patrol car changed then, it had a nice ring to it.
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The irony of it is, you don't have a patrol car.

[tbrown]

For some it's more fair than for others.

What is stopping you from going to the police academy?

This isn't a police state. At least not yet. In a free society the citizens are not required to work for the government to have civil rights.

[RogueUSMC]

I remember growing up how the WFPD used to pass out Dallas Cowboy trading cards...you just walked up to an officer and he would ask to see your collection, then he'd hand ya one you were missing. The chief lived right down the hill from my elementary school. We would stop at his house on our way home on our bikes, and if he was home, he would bring a whole box of them cards to the door and give each of us a few dozen. Of course it wasn't rare to see the whole Dallas Cowboys squad at the ford house on Saturday morning just to chat and shake your hand.

Nowadays, officers walk around like they got a 2x4 stuck where the sun don't shine so the kids just kinda give them room and keep walking. Kinda sad really...kinda like the Dallas Cowboys...

[VMI77]

For some it's more fair than for others.

What is stopping you from going to the police academy?

This isn't a police state. At least not yet. In a free society the citizens are not required to work for the government to have civil rights.

What makes you think it's not a police state yet? What can be done in a police state that can't be done here?

Right now the Feds can pick out virtually any target and destroy their lives, if not put them in prison, and it's being done for both political and economic reasons. The Gibson Guitar case, among many others. The police can kick your door in in the middle of the night and kill you, then just go...oooops....wrong address. They can shut down a whole city for one killer, detain you in your home or drag you out of it, and search it without a warrant as they did in Boston. They can shutdown an entire section of highway and detain you in your vehicle for hours, point guns at you and handcuff you, because some thugs robbed a bank. They can set up roadblocks 100 miles from any border and stop you like you're in a Banana Republic.

They can grope your wife and children at an airport, and even a train or a bus station if they've a mind to. They're about to put all your medical records and the mortgage and credit card purchases of mortgage holders in a Federal database. It's a crime to lie to the government but it's representatives can lie to you all they want. Your phone calls and internet activity are monitored. Parts of the country are under video and drone surveillance. They can now enter your home and confiscate your guns without a warrant ---for your own "safety" of course. They can enter your home like a burglar and tap your phone and computer under a secret warrant. They can confiscate your money and your property without ever convicting you of a crime --for just having too much cash in your possession. They can put you in jail for withdrawing the wrong amount of money from your own bank account. The government monitors your bank accounts and you get reported whenever you spend too much money. They can force you by law to buy insurance you don't want.

The president can order you to be killed, or held in indefinite detention without charges. You can be indicted by the Feds, be prosecuted with secret evidence in a secret trial, and prohibited from even mentioning it. There is a recent case in Alpine where the prosecutor and judge forced a woman to change her testimony about the police abuse of her sister by keeping her in jail until she recanted. It looks a lot like the FBI assassinated Todashev in Florida. The agent that killed him is essentially a crook, retired on "disability" from the Oakland PD and drawing a $52K pension....yet is somehow fit for duty with the FBI? In four years in Oakland he took the 5th in a corruption trial, and was the subject of two police brutality lawsuits and four Internal Affairs investigations. He shouldn't even qualify for the FBI, but if you're looking for someone to do black bag jobs and other dirty deeds, he'd be your man.

Sure, a lot of things that could be done aren't yet being done, or are infrequent, but all the infrastructure and "legal" authority for a police state are in place, and anyone can be a victim....just get in the way of someone with money and connections. Even in a police state they don't generally mess with people that are obedient. The reason people like you and me haven't felt the police state is because we're not worth the effort, and probably won't be for as long as we don't get any the way of anyone powerful --though the likelihood is increasing.