I agree police unions are awful and cause more harm than good. Everything you say is true (to some degree) but I don't think this qualifies the country to be a

I agree police unions are awful and cause more harm than good. Everything you say is true (to some degree) but I don't think this qualifies the country to be a police state. I'm not afraid of the police coming to my door because the police have a problem with me. I don't like them but I don't fear them and neither does anyone I know. There is still a due process and even though even one incident is too many, most times the police acts out of line they are punished even if it takes a while (again, due process). The punishment is usually far, far too lenient but at the very least, for the sake of this conversation, shows that they do not have the ultimate power. There is a lot that can be done about the quality of policing in this country but we are really far off a police state. We are simply a state with an incompetent perpetually afraid power hungry police, likely due to the prevalence of guns. It's tragic as is.