Here are some definitions that I found for police state on the interweb (answers.com)_:
Police State
1) A state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the people, especially by means of a secret police force.
2) A nation whose rulers maintain order and obedience by the threat of police or military force; one with a brutal, arbitrary government.
3) A police state is an authoritarian state which uses the police, especially secret police, to maintain and enforce political power, often through violent or arbitrary means. A police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism or other harsh means of social control. In a police state the police are not subject to the rule of law and there is no meaningful distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive.
A government does not describe itself as a "police state". Instead, it is a description assigned to a regime by internal or external critics in response to the laws, policies and actions of that regime, and is often used pejoratively to describe the regime's stance on human rights, the social contract and similar matters.
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