Is A Police State A Bad Thing?

[stonecold-basilisk]

A lot of people - mostly crazy conspiracy nuts - use the word "police state" as an insult. They are probably trying to imply that a county is automatically a dictatorship if there are cops everywhere.

I think that the "bumbling cop" stereotype is true to some extent but that is largely because the police don't get enough funding. The police are funded by taxpayers. If more tax money went to the cops then they could have a more extreme training program so that the cops wouldn't be so incompetent.

We could get this money by cutting funding to the military. The "war on terror" is crap. The military of any country should only protect that country from invaders. We also need to end the war on drugs so that the cops do what needs to be done - they need to put an end to street violence.

Lately a lot of people have been talking about Greece and all the street violence that is happening there. White nationalists and anarchists have been fighting in the streets of Greece a lot lately. The Solution is simple - the Greek government should spend a ton of tax money on cops and then put them all over the streets. If the cops see any anarchist and white nationalists fighting then the cops will beat all of them until they cry. That is what cops should do to people who cause violence in the streets.

That is how it should work in any country. If the Bloods and Crips are caught fighting in american streets then they deserve merciless police brutality. If the KKK start beating up blacks in the streets then the KKK get police brutality. If Christian or Muslim religious wackjobs start beating up homosexuals or atheists in the streets then they will get mercilessly beaten by the cops.

Cops are not the problem. They are the solution. If we pour more money onto them then they will liberate us from the street goons who oppress us with their bullshit.

[leanlifter1]

At 10/11/12 02:31 PM, stonecold-basilisk wrote:

mostly crazy conspiracy nuts

Well most people thought like you when they world was to be flat or that airplanes were impossible to fly etc .. in short it is extremely ignorant to dam people just because there opinions and ideologies differ from what is popular and easy to digest.

[ClickToPlay]

But who is there to beat them up?

[Dawnslayer]

Have you ever heard the expression "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?" Police presence is not the problem; the problem is that crime occurs in the first place, and fixing the reasons that people turn to crime will go much farther using much fewer resources.

Also, "police state" does not refer to being tough on crime. It refers to when domestic law enforcement is an agent of suppressing and eliminating dissension against the government. So if you believe in the right to freedom of thought and expression thereof, then yes, the police state is a very bad thing.

[TucoM]

At 10/11/12 02:31 PM, stonecold-basilisk wrote:

The Solution is simple - the Greek government should spend a ton of tax money on cops and then put them all over the streets.

Not so simple.......the whole problem in Greece is because they are OUT of money.

[leanlifter1]

At 10/12/12 01:26 AM, Cootie wrote:

Most crime revolves around poverty. Eradicating that would cut crimes drastically, and it is also not a bad idea in and of itself.

Dam you are one of the few around here that speak true logic. Crime is enabled by poverty and lower income classes so IMO if we abolish poverty and raise the minimum wage and make good jobs or rather "Careers" more readily available then people have no excuse to turn to crime for income supplementation. On the other hand the judicial system is if not the biggest money maker for the government so I can't see solutions happening with these current tyrants in power.

[DragonPunch]

I have actually thought about this. As long as that police state does not interfere with communications and focuses on more violent crimes that threaten their citizens, and as long as they're promoting non-violence to solve problems, but still, do not interfere with the media, I think a police state would work. Again, this is as long as they do not interfere with communications and human rights.

However, the drawbacks are too , severe for me to support a police state, so I would move away from said police state.

[LemonCrush]

At 10/12/12 11:58 AM, HiryuGouki wrote:

However, the drawbacks are too , severe for me to support a police state, so I would move away from said police state.

Yet you'd rather "gouge your eyes out" than live where Romney is President...wow

[Iron-Hampster]

The entire point of a police state is that you are always being watched through secret police, surveillance, phone tapping and everyone's movements being tracked in some way. Any time anyone gets that sort of power it ends in disaster. It sounds to me like this is another "Communism only killed over 100 million people, lets give it another try" sort of thing...

[stonecold-basilisk]

A lot of people here are saying that the problem is poverty but that is a problem for economists to solve. That is not for the cops to solve. I just think that cops AND economists should do their damn job.

If the poverty problem was solved then there would still be crime in my opinion. I would still want cops everywhere to protect me from goons.

[JeffShort]

A police state is a wonderful thing. Just look at the history of Nazi Germany.

[science-is-fun]

Police state usually refers to a dictatorship, not a good police force.

[JoS]

At 10/13/12 02:43 PM, Iron-Hampster wrote: The entire point of a police state is that you are always being watched through secret police, surveillance, phone tapping and everyone's movements being tracked in some way.

Not really true, in a lot of police states its merely the impression that you could be watched at any time. There was one city in Germany, something like 500 000 people and only 12 Gestapo. Clearly not enough to watch anymore than a handful of people, but the use of other citizens to spy on their neighbours made them extremely effective.

[Silverdust]

The connotation of a "police state" mostly implies a draconian government similar to George Orwell's 1984. And, while I can see the exaggerations and improbable methods of fictional "police states", there is some wisdom to avoiding such authority.

Firstly, for a police state to be effective and meet the purpose of its installment, we would need to live in a perfect world or develop a 100% automated police system. I say this, because when there is even a single human element in government (especially totalitarian), corruption and greed infects the good intentions of the system's creation. When the power is shifted heavily in favor of a large human police force, a probable outcome would be extreme oppression on the general public rather than solely criminals.

Second, the inevitable flaws of a police state (in addition to the reasons above) would outweigh the benefits. Perfect security is impossible, and it is unrealistic to assume so. I hate to bring up terrorism, but people who wish to do harm will always find a way to do adapt, and do harm. Moreover, the huge invasion of privacy that must be warranted under an effective police state is, in my eyes, far from freedom of crime. This is one of the main factors in my third reason:

The backlash against such a proposition or installment from innocent people would be detrimental to the integrity of the state. A police state will surely incite riots - perhaps even a full scale rebellion. Then, we would have something not dissimilar to Egypt and Syria. In an American scenario, the states would probably align just as they did prior to the Civil War. Fortunately, the separatists would probably come out victorious with the help of the military (which I am confident would not go along with something like this).

At 10/11/12 02:31 PM, stonecold-basilisk wrote: That is how it should work in any country. If the Bloods and Crips are caught fighting in american streets then they deserve merciless police brutality. If the KKK start beating up blacks in the streets then the KKK get police brutality. If Christian or Muslim religious wackjobs start beating up homosexuals or atheists in the streets then they will get mercilessly beaten by the cops.

These instances are not common or viral enough to warrant an entire police state. Riot control works just fine. Isolated crime events will always happen regardless of 24/7 surveillance.