Drugs: we treat it like a policing issue, other countries treat it as a social and health issue.
Immigration: we turn it into a policing deal when really its an economic and social system matter.
Gangs: our cops talk tough on the nightly news and the newspaper, but really this is directly tied to the drug and immigration problem and is again, and economic problem of when you have disfranchised young men.
Even a lot of the speeding and traffic problems are really cases of poor civil engineering and traffic management, but we "fix" them through a convenient policing trick that also generated revenue without raising anyone's taxes visibly.
Homelessness, especially due to mental illness? Let's make laying on the sidewalk illegal so we can turn a social problem into a police issue.
So in short, our US system turns things into policing issues because you know, fixing the real problems would be tough.
At the same time I know of cases of people being imprisoned that should be receiving psychiatric care instead; so point 6 in the article struck me especially.
The government(s) have shown a consistent disregard for freedom of assembly.