It's official - the police state is here

I went driving on Friday - quick shopping trip on the way to pick up my son after a late night school function.

A couple of kilometres from home, and I find a police road block, restricting all traffic to a single lane where multiple officers wait by a booze bus - mandatory breath check for alcohol above some arbitrary limit.

Now, I don't drink alcohol at all, thus I was unconcerned about consequences of the breath test, but I had a tight time frame to meet - being late to collect a teenage boy from a school function is not an option. So I decided not to insist on things being done properly as I normally would. Still it was eye-opening.

The person in the fancy blue suit, with the drop leg holster carrying a Glock .40 S&W made NO attempt to identify himself (as required by law); he made NO attempt to justify his demand for a breath sample (as required by law); and his badge number was NOT visible (as required by law) as it was obscured by his high-vis vest (as required by law). So, one out of four isn't too bad, is it?

He got his sample, waited for the measurement to come back 0.0, handed me the disposable straw when I demanded it, and told me to be on my way.

No harm. no foul, right?

In a pig's ear, sunshine.

That officer didn't even give lip service to the law, and he was supremely confident that there was not a thing that I could do about it. The law itself is worse - it says that the whole stop was legal, despite there being no way that there was any reasonable articulable suspicion that a crime had been committed.

I could have been difficult, and wrapped him up in all sorts of procedural knots, but the only impact would have been to ME and my son. That puppet of the police state won't suffer a thing - not even the pangs of a guilty conscience.

Given the number of people that don't see a problem with the concept of booze busses, it's too late - the police state is already here.