The police state cometh

The first thing I noticed when I pulled up to my sons school this morning was the local police department squad car in the parking lot. Though many districts in my state have their own small police force, our school district may have schools in multiple cities. For security I won't tell you their routine but they were there. I remember the times I was assigned to "sit" on an area because of some threat or intelligence. Throughout the year there were days where we were advised to watch our schools and our government buildings a little more closely. First, it was the anniversary of the Oklahoma bombings. Second, the government killing the Branch Davidians. Thirdly on September 11th. Now it seems that this is going to be a daily occurrence to see more and more law enforcement activities in our daily lives. Fear is causing us to give up and give in more and more of our freedoms for the comfort of a nanny state. The creep started twenty years ago. As the Columbines and the Virginia Techs became more common place the simple answer by our elected leaders was more laws, more surveillance, more cameras, less liberty.

So what's the answer? The answer is not looking at every situation as an opportunity to restrict the movements and daily activities of the law abiding. The answer is to look at the situations individually and see how society failed to pick up the cues of why the person wanted to kill. As I discussed on Monday's blog, the young mad man that committed the atrocities at Sandy Hook had numerous contacts with those that could have prevented this. Who failed to see the hints? Hell, what are the hints that would signal the potential violent lashing out by these individuals. Am I the only one that sees that these boys and men have a common agitator? They have been outcast either by their own doing or by the communities doing. They mostly all felt that there was not need for them in our world. They had no stake in what was going on around them. They immersed themselves in role playing and online and video games. They slowly dehumanised themselves so they saw others the same way they saw themselves. So one of the answers would be to seek out these "Lost Boys" and reengage them into the world of the living.

Back to the issue of the police state. Police officers are a paramilitary force. We have a chain of command and rank structures. We tend to be given and follow orders. We are rarely asked to interpret the law instead enforce it in a black and white manner. The key to the police state is that your police officers must follow orders blindly and without question. I can say this from  experience, there are very few men and women on any police department that I know that will take anyone's civil liberties away for some arbitrary reason. Just because the motherland deems it essential to impose a rule I always had it at my discretion whether to enforce it. Most of the men and women on police departments right now would have to be fired and replaced by some brainwashed scabs to bring about some of the Orwellian enforcement that folks on the internet are speaking about. I don't want you to think this won't happen. It will! Just not yet. I am not sure of the time but there will be a moment that we here in America grant a few the abilities to take away a citizens freedom without Habeus Corpus, oh wait that's in the Patriot Act and some new Obama executive orders.