Americans love to believe that their country is a beacon of liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness, but in reality, it is not any of those things in the 21st century, as citizens have again and again, ceded their rights, or had their rights ceded from them, so that, in effect, America is a police state, in structure, but not however a police state all of the time and everywhere; at least, it isn't, not yet.
While there are a lot of ways to create a police state, America, uses the most basic one which is to take an event, typically, real and at least somewhat germane, and manufactured into a case in which the citizens, for their "safety," need to be on lockdown, and that the police in order to "protect" those citizens are given carte blanche to conduct their business any way that they see fit, for as long as they determined that they need to, or are instructed to by those that actually commandeer the policing arm of the state.
Further to the point, a lockdown is only as good as the personnel and equipment so provided, of which, American policing agencies, alongside of American military forces domesticated to perform actions as instructed by authorities beyond judicial reach, have not only as much weaponry as they could reasonably need to draw upon, but also enough personnel and infrastructure to do so in a very comprehensive manner, for an extended period of time.
If one looks at recent lockdowns such as in Boston, Charlottesville, Baltimore, and Ferguson, the lockdowns themselves did not a single thing to actually catch the perpetrators or to resolve the very reason for the unrest or civil disobedience within those cities and often times exacerbated the disorder even further. What the lockdown did do, though, was make it very clear to those that lived within those areas, that their lives were no longer under their own control, and that the permission to go about their business or to conduct their business, was done only under the express permission of those in charge of that lockdown.
Unfortunately, the rather sad thing is from a law and order perspective, lockdowns actually work; that is, a lockdown means that far less crime is committed such as murders, rapes, robberies, and thefts, with the only crimes going up being those crimes committed directly or indirectly against the authorities in charge of the lockdown. This means, that those that want the masses to be under control and under guard at all times, are the biggest proponents of lockdowns, because lockdowns do not happen in their neighborhood, and will in all probability not meaningfully impact their business or their source of income.
What lockdowns accomplish, and the very purpose of the increase in police state lockdowns, is to keep the masses in their place, all under the guise, that this is necessary for their protection, from enemies foreign and domestic, and that lockdowns that are done often enough, and in particular are done on a massive scale, will, in all probability, be eventually accepted as the "new normal" by the middle class of America, who will have traded their freedom, choice, and liberty, for safety and security, never seeming to realize that they have betrayed America and its ideals, by being complacent to the American totalitarian military-industrial police state.