What does a police state really look like in practice in America? Is it the cartoonish dystopia of sci-fi books? Is it like 1998′s “The Siege” which predicted a wholesale instatement of martial law? Or in the age of the drone-wielding police department, is it something more mundane and subtle yet nonetheless pernicious? From this city in the middle of middle America, it looks like the latter.

When people think of Denver, many think of skiing and, since the last election, marijuana. But from here in the Mile High City, things seem a bit different. In the day to day operation of the city, we aren’t as much defined by snow and pot as we are by the fact that we live under the rule of an increasingly brutal police force. It is a police force that our political leaders are more than happy to deploy to punish undesirables, and worse, that the most powerful media organ is more than happy to defend.

We have become, in short, a national cautionary tale – one that no doubt epitomizes similar trends throughout the country.

This sad situation has been long in the making. Over the last decade, while then-mayor John Hickenlooper was gaining national plaudits for his geek-scientist charm, he was overseeing a police department that has become so violent toward citizens, that the U.S. Department of Justice is now considering a formal civil rights investigation. In all, a Cato Institute studyshows that in terms of official misconduct, Denver’s police force is the sixth worst in the entire country.

The highest profile incidents tell the bigger story.

For instance, after the 2008 Democratic Convention, Hickenlooper’s administration was forced to settle a lawsuit showing evidence that he ordered his police force to engage in“indiscriminate arrests.”

In 2011, new mayor Michael Hancock joined with now-Gov. Hickenlooper to become the first government officials to sic riot-gear-clad police on peaceful Occupy Denver protestors, thus turning the State Capitol grounds into the visual definition of the term “police state.”The episode included firing tear gas and rubber bullets at unarmed citizens.