Hopefully this will shut up al the UK haters who constantly bang on about how restricted the UK is and how damn free and easy the USA is.

I've been arrested,
and while it happened,
I was nothing but co-operative and friendly,
and they still treated me like dirt.

I know that not all cops are douchebags, but man, the majority sure do make a bad reputation for themselves...

You don't hear a lot of stories in the news about how good the arrests go.

That's because clean/peaceful/professional arrests are less exciting/newsworthy.

What do you hear more about on the news: plane crashes, or planes make it from point A to point B free of incident?

It's strange how even though you're agreeing with me, it somehow sounds like you're not.

You are now my arch nemisis, Sykeo.

*takes off glove and slaps sykeo in the face with it*

I fart in your general direction!

That aggravates me too. I can say that the parts of the US I have visited were much more oppressive and restrictive of general day to day freedoms than anywhere in the UK.

One of (but by no means all) the problems is that two many people who aren't policemen are allowed to dress up like policemen. It gives them a false sense of their function.

To give you a flavour of the general state of play that I experienced, although it has been a long time since I last went to Alton Towers I'm fairly certain that they don't insist on taking your fingerprints at the entrance and then again before you use various facilities within the park like storage lockers.

I can, with some authority, say that the same is not true of theme parks in the US.

They fingerprint you on entry to the country so I suppose that is setting a precedent; setting your expectations for what is to come.