The article seems pretty US focused. There are a lot of countries out there that are less police dominated that could be used as examples. In the UK where I am the policing is fairly light. It would be hard to say society is dominated by it outside a few bad areas where gangs stab each other so the police have to intervene. I was last stopped by the police about 20 years ago for driving 130mph in a 70 limit and let off with a warning.
Yeah, it's a bit different here. The last time I was stopped was a few years ago for having a burnt-out brake light in Nowheresville, Wyoming. The cop probably didn't like my dirty car and out-of-state plates, but my paperwork was in order, and I'm a harmless-looking white dude, so I got away with mild harassment and a warning.
This is really at the heart of the problem I have with the American approach to policing - everything becomes a police issue. Your tail light is out. Does the cop: a) tell you your tail light is out and to have a nice day and drive safe or b) demand license and registration, take 10 minutes to run a complete background check, insult you for having the tail light out, threaten to search the rest of your vehicle, and finally get around to giving you a ticket so that they can meet their quotas and fill their coffers.
Drugs: we treat it like a policing issue, other countries treat it as a social and health issue.
Immigration: we turn it into a policing deal when really its an economic and social system matter.
Gangs: our cops talk tough on the nightly news and the newspaper, but really this is directly tied to the drug and immigration problem and is again, and economic problem of when you have disfranchised young men.
Even a lot of the speeding and traffic problems are really cases of poor civil engineering and traffic management, but we "fix" them through a convenient policing trick that also generated revenue without raising anyone's taxes visibly.
Homelessness, especially due to mental illness? Let's make laying on the sidewalk illegal so we can turn a social problem into a police issue.
So in short, our US system turns things into policing issues because you know, fixing the real problems would be tough.
I have witnessed very heavy handed policing of peaceful protestors and squatters here in the UK.
At the same time I know of cases of people being imprisoned that should be receiving psychiatric care instead; so point 6 in the article struck me especially.
The police seem to treat protestors much worse than anybody else, which makes me think such heavy-handed tactics are a response to pressure from above.
The government(s) have shown a consistent disregard for freedom of assembly.
