Despite media scrutiny and activists protesting, so far very little is changing in Chicago as far as police tactics go. The Guardian specifically targets forced confessions in a new piece out this morning, and there is an increasingly hostile atmosphere when it comes to law enforcement in general. We at RedState have covered police issues before, largely because it falls directly under one of the categories of conservatism that we talk about most – the size and scope of government.

Inching closer and closer towards a police state, law enforcement has taken on the assumption of infallibility simply because it is law enforcement. Conservatives, by and large tend to unwaveringly support the police because we as a movement do believe in the rule of law. However, there is a very nuanced difference between rule of law and police being above it. From The Guardian:

But soon after his departure from the hospital, Flewellen would again be in pain. Two Chicago Police detectives, Francis Valadez and Steve Buglio had arrived to St Bernard’s in search of Flewellen and allegedly intimidated the couple into heading straight to violent crimes unit headquarters from the hospital, for questioning. According to testimony from the criminal trial that eventually saw Flewellen’s acquittal for two murder charges, based on DNA evidence, he was heard screaming from inside a police interrogation room, in the hours that followed, after Valadez – now one of 22 district commanders leading the Chicago Police force – stomped on Flewellen’s injured foot and proceeded to crush the wheels of a metal chair into his wounds.

In all, Flewellen says in his lawsuit that seven detectives beat him over the course of 36 hours, ignoring his pleas for a lawyer, sleep and pain medication while threatening that the Department of Children and Family Services would take his girlfriend’s infant son away from her. Following the barrage, he “confessed”.

These acts are as horrendous as they are all too common within modern law enforcement, particularly in Chicago and other (mostly Democrat-run) big cities with high crime rates. It is a law enforcement system which, more often than not, sees law enforcers as free to do whatever they need to do to bring the guilty to justice. But, in the cases of forced confessions and police brutality of this type, we see the innocent and the guilty alike put on trial under conditions that are suspicious at best.

The nature of us as law abiding citizens is to simply stay out of the way of the state and let them do their jobs, but multiple motives, including racism, can be and are used to drive police to conclusions rather than evidence at hand. This is how a police state operates, depriving citizens of freedoms in order to keep the peace and maintain order. It is not how this country was set up to operate, and we should push for key reforms in both law enforcement and in government to prevent these things from happening.