Quotes about police
William S. Burroughs -
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.
Oriana Fallaci -
The more democratic and open a society is, the more it's exposed to terrorism. The more a country is free, not governed by a police regime, the more it risks hijackings or massacres like the ones that took place for many years in Italy and Germany and other parts of Europe.
Stieg Larsson -
Every year Swedish society produces a new generation of threatened women who can testify to the lack of legal rights and the lukewarm interest shown by the police and other authorities.
Jose Rodriguez -
We knew that if the photos of CIA officers conducting authorized EIT (enhanced interrogation techniques) ever got out, the difference between a legal, authorized, necessary, and safe program and the mindless actions of some MPs (military police) would be buried by the impact of the images.
Richard Stallman -
In the U.S., you even lose legal rights if you store your data in a company's machines instead of your own. The police need to present you with a search warrant to get your data from you; but if they are stored in a company's server, the police can get it without showing you anything. They may not even have to give the company a search warrant.
Trey Gowdy -
I don't have an issue with whether - from a legal standpoint, with whether or not government can impose the ultimate punishment on people. We do it in capital cases. Police officers shoot fleeing felons.
Richard Stallman -
In the US, you even lose legal rights if you store your data in a company's machines instead of your own. The police need to present you with a search warrant to get your data from you; but if they are stored in a company's server, the police can get it without showing you anything.
William Feather -
An invitation to a wedding invokes more trouble than a summons to a police court.
John Shelby Spong -
You learn that you either are going to have a police state where you don't have any freedom left, or you're going to build a world that doesn't create terrorists - and that means a whole different way of 'getting along.'
Chad Lindberg -
I actually wanted to be a police officer like my dad for the longest time, up until my sophomore year in high school when I started doing plays. I did plays when I was little, but in high school, I started getting into acting.
Doreen Cronin -
I wanted to be a police officer for a long time so I could be just like my dad!
Kyril Bonfiglioli -
I never think of policemen's wives their beauty maddens me like wine.
Emma Goldman -
I feel sure that the police are helping us more than I could do in ten years. They are making more anarchists than the most prominent people connected with the anarchist cause could make in ten years. If they will only continue I shall be very grateful they will save me lots of work.
Martin Cruz Smith - Tatiana
He never had been good at arguing with women they tapped into pools of resentment over slights that had steeped for years.
Lukas Forchhammer -
When you get frisked by the police at the age of 10, and they empty your schoolbag out in the street and kick your books around and calling you names because of where you live, you just get an anger towards everyone who is outside of your neighborhood.
Colin Kaepernick -
There's a lot of things that need to change. One specifically? Police brutality.
Frank Iero -
The relationship between 'My Chemical Romance' and Michael Pedicone is over. He was caught red-handed stealing from the band and confessed to police after our show last night in Auburn, Washington. We are heartbroken and sick to our stomachs over this entire situation.
Janis Karpinski -
There was a military police brigade with over 3,400 soldiers getting ready to go home because their mission - prisoner-of-war operations - was finished.
Kelsey Brickl - Wolves and Urchins: The Early Life of Inspector Javert
Praying to the Almighty, Javert?” called a voice, and Javert opened his eyes to see Rousseau and Leclerc smirking at him. Javert tipped his head and said to the others,"If I was, it would be awfully rude to interrupt my prayer, don’t you think? But, no, Leclerc. I find no solace in speaking with an imaginary puppeteer.”Rousseau, who was twenty-five and utterly dim of mind, frowned at Javert’s words. Javert rolled his eyes and sighed,"I don’t pray.
Judy Gold -
If you're going to hit a car, try to be sure that it's not a cop car
Barry Eisler - Livia Lone
Most people are like sheep. Nice, harmless creatures who want nothing more than to be left alone so they can graze. But then of course there are wolves. Who want nothing more than to eat the sheep.But there’s a third kind of person. The sheepdog. Sheepdogs have fangs like wolves. But their instinct isn’t predation. It’s protection. All they want, what they live for, is to protect the flock.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Texas
You couldn't be satisfied with being an amateur asshole, could you, Jimbo! You had to go and turn pro on me!
Terry Pratchett - Night Watch
I get it,' said the prisoner. 'Good Cop, Bad Cop, eh?'If you like.' said Vimes. 'But we're a bit short staffed here, so if I give you a cigarette would you mind kicking yourself in the teeth?
Terry Pratchett - Night Watch
No! Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" the man yelled. "Really?" said Vimes. "What's the orbital velocity of the moon?""What?""Oh, you'd like something simpler?
Raymond Chandler - The High Window
Until you guys own your own souls you don't own mine. Until you guys can be trusted every time and always, in all times and conditions, to seek the truth out and find it and let the chips fall where they may—until that time comes, I have the right to listen to my conscience, and protect my client the best way I can. Until I'm sure you won't do him more harm than you'll do the truth good. Or until I'm hauled before somebody that can make me talk.
Lewis Black -
They're so broke that they've actually cut essential services. In many places, they've cut policemen, because, who the fuck needs them? Or firemen, son of a bitch, it's much more fun watching something burn down.
Steven Magee -
Western police officers are an arguably corrupt group of people that have rigged the system to make them almost untouchable.
Steven Magee -
When the police willfully break the law on video and then deny the event in writing, you know that you are dealing with a blatantly corrupt group of people.
Steven Magee -
The organized domestic terrorism of the general public is why many people regard the police as corrupt.
Steven Magee -
It is the common peoples duty to police the police.
Steven Magee -
While police officers who blatantly shaft the common people believe that they are God, they are the Devil to those that they wrong.
Noam Chomsky -
Responsibility I believe accrues through privilege. People like you and me have an unbelievable amount of privilege and therefore we have a huge amount of responsibility. We live in free societies where we are not afraid of the police; we have extraordinary wealth available to us by global standards. If you have those things, then you have the kind of responsibility that a person does not have if he or she is slaving seventy hours a week to put food on the table; a responsibility at the very lea
Dane Whalen -
The 'thin blue line' is nothing more than the no snitching policy found in any other criminal gang.
Benson Bruno - and Every Set of Dentures Can Attest to the
Frosting was his favorite. He liked to eat doughnuts at every meal. Because it was healthier to eat six small meals a day than three large ones, he restricted himself: jellied for breakfast, glazed for brunch, cream-filled for lunch, frosting for linner, chocolate for dinner, and powdered sugar for 2 a.m. supermarket stakeout. Because linner coincided with the daily crime peak, he always ate his favorite variety to ease him. Frosting was his only choice now, and upsetting his routine was a quiet
Marjane Satrapi - The Complete Persepolis
They found records and video-cassettes at their place, a deck of cards, a chess set. In other words, everything that's banned.
Philip Dray - At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America
Is it possible for white America to really understand blacks’ distrust of the legal system, their fears of racial profiling and the police, without understanding how cheap a black life was for so long a time in our nation’s history?
Gore Vidal - Death in the Fifth Position
There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.
David Graeber - a Movement
The police can use violence to say, expel citizens from a public park because they are enforcing duly constituted laws. Laws gain their legitimacy from the Constitution. The Constitution gains its legitimacy from something called 'the people.' But how did 'the people' actually grant legitimacy to the Constitution? As the American and French revolutions make clear: basically, through acts of illegal violence. So what gives the police the right to use force to suppress the very thing–a popular upr
Dane Whalen -
Terrorism is the use of violence or intimidation in the pursuit of a political aim. The highest political aim is the creation and enforcement of law. Cops use violence and intimidation to enforce law. Therefore, all cops are, by definition, terrorists.
George Stamatis -
It's not all about building police forces and more prisons. This is in a sense an abdication of what the rule of law is and in the same way that simply running to electoral processes has nothing to do with the true building of democracies. There's allot more to democracies then elections and there's allot more to the rule of law then law enforcement.
Julián Leyzaola -
People think someone's going to come from outside and cure the problem. People think a messiah will come. No. They key to success is to strengthen what's local.
rassool jibraeel snyman -
Oppressors specialise in rasing wolves from amonst the sheep then together with the wolves devour the sheep
Raymond Chandler - The Lady in the Lake
Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get...
Joe Orton - Loot
Reading isn't an occupation we encourage among police officers. We try to keep the paperwork down to a minimum.
Captain Hank Bracker - "Suppresed I Rise"
My mother’s father, Grandfather Thieme, the son of a railroad engineer, looked quite dapper as a young man. Prior to 1933 the Hamburg Police Department consisted of 21 units, with 2,100 men. My grandfather was a Polizist with the Sicherheitspolizei or uniformed policeman with the department. Later, with an expansion of the Hamburg Police Department to 5,500 men and the formation of an investigative branch, he was promoted to the esteemed position of a Kriminalbeamte inspector. He rose to the ran
Rebecca McNutt -
I used to want to be a cop for a brief time, a detective, solving crimes and upholding the law, ever since I stated watching crime shows in junior high. But being a cop, contrary to what many believe, isn't like the films or television shows that we see every day. If you're the cop who has to have the grim duty of telling a parent that their child was killed, or who loses their friend on a dangerous case, or who has to interview victims of horrible crimes, somehow I imagine that you just want to
Clint Smith -
Only a few days after my encounter with the police, two patrolmen tackled Alton Sterling onto a car, then pinned him down on the ground and shot him in the chest while he was selling CDs in front of a convenience store, seventy-five miles up the road in Baton Rouge. A day after that, Philando Castile was shot in the passenger seat of his car during a police traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, as his girlfriend recorded the aftermath via Facebook Live.Then, the day after Castile was killed
Steven Magee -
Never trust an armed police officer.
Israelmore Ayivor -
No policeman had ever arrested anyone for over-reading; but ignorance prosecutes those who under-read. You begin to stop growing on the day you stop learning, so why not keep learning and keep growing!
Karen Rodwill Solomon - The Price They Pay
The next significant incident would change Steven forever: an apartment building fire. Steven and another officer arrived to the sounds of the screams of parents desperately trying to find their children. They ran inside believing there were three children trapped; they scooped them up and ran outside with a feeling of elation and relief. They had saved the children from certain death. The feeling was short lived. A frantic mother approached them, “Where’s my daughter?”Steven and the other offic
Karen Rodwill Solomon - Hearts Beneath the Badge
Imagine this garden; one you’ve planted from seed, cultivated with love. When the seeds break the ground, they seek sunshine, warmth, and nutrients. The seeds have no control over the weather.They are as dependent on it as we are on our minds. You may have control over the location of your garden, the frequency with which you tend to it, and the amount of care you give it, but you can’t control the weather.It may be sunny one day, rainy the next. You prop the vines in the hopes they will flouris
Truman Capote -
I know it's become fashionable to depict the police as sadistic Cossacks riding down innocent citizens, but I've become well enough acquainted with law-enforcement agencies across the country to know that's just not the case. Of course, a certain small percentage of policemen are irresponsible...but that doesn't justify the current unjust barrage of propaganda against a tribe of men who are hard-working, underpaid and daily risking their lives to protect us. I'm sure there are isolated instances
Steven Magee -
It is through experience that I have lost faith in USA law enforcement.
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah -
When you confidently defend fiction, think about reality also
Steven Magee -
I think it is a wise person who does not answer the door to uninvited police officers. Who knows what kind of crazy person could be standing there with a loaded gun!
David Graeber - Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
Residents of the squatter community of Christiana, Denmark, for example, have a Christmastide ritual where they dress in Santa suits, take toys from department stores and distribute them to children on the street, partly just so everyone can relish the images of the cops beating down Santa and snatching the toys back from crying children.
Francis M. Nevins Jr. - Night and Fear: A Centenary Collection of Stories by Cornell Woolrich
In Woolrich's crime fiction there is a gradual development from pulp to noir. The earlier a story, the more likely it stresses pulp elements: one-dimensional macho protagonists, preposterous methods of murder, hordes of cardboard gangsters, dialogue full of whiny insults, blistering fast action. But even in some of his earliest crime stories one finds aspects of noir, and over time the stream works itself pure.In mature Woolrich the world is an incomprehensible place where beams happen to fall,
Chidiebere Prosper Agbugba -
Accountability in police can best be done in an assembly where everyone concerned will come and share their views and opinion to the activities of the police because there's a whole lot of excesses in the police force that must be corrected for effective policing and better society's trust on them.
Jack Kerouac - Desolation Angels
They put spotlights on me standing there in the road in jeans and workclothes, with the big woeful rucksack a-back, and asked:-"Where are you going?" which is precisely what they asked me a year later under Television floodlights in New York, "Where are you going?"-Just as you cant explain to the police, you cant explain to society "Looking for peace.
Tiffany Madison -
When the Rule of Law disappears, we are ruled by the whims of men.
Sergio de la Pava - A Naked Singularity
And if you learn only one thing from the ensuing maybe let it be this: the police were not merely interested observers who occasionally witnessed criminality and were then basically compelled to make an arrest, rather the police had the special ability to in effect create Crime by making an arrest almost whenever they wishes, so widespread was wrongdoing. Consequently, the decision on who would become a body was often affected by overlooked factors like the candidate's degree of humility, the ne
Max Weber - The Vocation Lectures: Science as a Vocation/Politics as a Vocation
... A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopolyof the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.
Erik Pevernagie -
Comes the tipping point in life, when we decide to a ‘stop and search’ and our emotional police bring us to a standstill. This allows us to scan all the little details in the spectrum of our being; scour all fuzzy or cryptic elements that are floating around in our mind and restore the fault lines in the cluttered tale of our life. ("The world was somewhere else")
Steven Magee -
If peaceful protesting really worked, the need to peacefully protest would have subsided to almost zero a long time ago! Instead, the thing that has subsided to almost zero are the number of complaints filed against police officers that are actually upheld.
Ann Medlock -
If you can't experience the humanity of people who don't look like you, you're not civilized enough to be an officer of the peace.
Derrick Jensen - Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization
A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of green paper.
M.L Rapier -
There is sometimes a fine line between a cop and a criminal. What drives their personality may be the same, and they have simply chosen different roles and professions to call their own."Dr. ML Rapier PhD, Clinical Psychologist.
V.C. Andrews - Flowers in the Attic
Or was Chris thinking, as I was, that if we went tothe police and told our story, our faces would be splashed on the frontpages of every newspaper in the country? Would the glare of publicitymake up for what we'd lose? Our privacy-our need to stay together?Could we lose each other just to get even?
Terry Pratchett - The Fifth Elephant
There were a lot of things he could say. "Son of a bitch!" would have been a good one. Or he could say, "Welcome to civilization!" He could have said, "Laugh this one off!" He might have said, "Fetch!" But he didn’t, because if he had said any of those things then he’d have known that what he had just done was murder.
Lewis N. Roe - From A To Theta: Taking The Tricky Subject Of Religion And Explaining Why It Makes Sense In A Way We Can All Under
We have laws in our country that tell us not to murder or steal and we have police that enforce them. The question is whether you personally need the police to watch you. If they disappeared would you begin killing and thieving because you know no one will come after you, or will you carry on not doing it because it is what you actually believe is right?
Bruce Crown - Chronic Passions
He was a man more concerned with the truth than his arrest quota, a philosophy that would often have him skate on thin ice with the higher ups.
Gus Russo - The Outfit: The Role of Chicago's Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America
McDonald, who was known to hate policemen, was once approached by two cops for a two-dollar donation. “We’re burying a policeman,” one of them said, to which Mike responded, “Here’s ten dollars. Bury five of them.
Steven Magee -
I advise all people that have had an interaction with the police to obtain a copy of the police report, as you may find a very different story in there to what actually occurred.
Larry Moniz -
Evil and I are old adversaries. When we compete I hate to lose," Manny Bettencourt from Murder in the Pinelands
Veronica Roth - Divergent
I also remember that my father was one of the people who voted to get the Dauntless out of the factionless sector of the city. He said the poor didn’t need policing; they needed help, and we could give it to them. But I would rather not mention that now, or here. It’s one of the many things Erudite gives as evidence of Abnegation’s incompetence.
C. Snyder -
Sometimes a policeman must confront people about lying. No one likes to be called a liar. But it is what it is! A fact is a fact! If someone is a liar, put them on notice. You should not be punished for doing the right thing. It is the job of a good investigator to get the truth.
Kenneth Eade - The Spy Files
Silence is never an admission. We learn that in law school.
Steven Magee -
If I am ever unexpectedly stopped in my car by the police, my response after pulling over in a populated area is to politely and clearly inform them that I am unarmed, I am recording everything, if they want to take me to the police station that they will need to appoint a lawyer, and I am now using my USA federal right to silence.
Alexander Ferrick - HACK3R
If Jack had followed him instead of trying to reclaim his car, he would undoubtedly have voiced his disappointment that they were not yet shooting laser cannons. Frankly, Richard thought dodging the police’s bullets would be problematic enough.
Donald Jeffries - The Unreals
Waldo nodded and looked at the policeman's face. Somehow the water that was dripping from the bill of his cap made him appear almost human. Nah, Waldo thought, it would take a lot more than water to wash that look off.
Tracey Emin - Strangeland
He pulled my skirt up. I began to worry. Everyone knew he had broken in girls before and I didn't want it to happen to me. I said, 'No. Get off, please.' He pulled me down the alley and pushed me to the ground. As I lay on my back worrying about my new blue coat, he pushed his fingers up between my legs — and rammed himself into me.I was crying. His lips were pressed against mine but I was motionless, like a small corpse. He grunted and I knew it was over. He got up, I just lay there on the grou
Steven Magee -
If you want to understand the causes of aggression, study police officers
Mokokoma Mokhonoana -
A murderer is a killer without a uniform.
Anthony Horowitz - The House of Silk
No, the events which I am about to describe were simply too monstrous, too shocking to appear in print. They still are. It is no exaggeration to suggest that they would tear apart the entire fabric of society and, particularly at a time of war, this is something I cannot risk.
Sandra Balzo - Triple Shot
Goody. That must be why they were looking for a 22-caliber anything when they came by with their search warrant this morning.''They didn't!''They did.''When?''Oddly enough, right before I upped my meds.
Sherman Alexie - Indian Killer
Office Peone looked at John and wondered what mental illness he had. The Seattle streets were filled with the mostly-crazy, half-crazy, nearly crazy, and soon-to-be crazy. Indian, white, Chicano, Asian, men, women, children. The social workers did not have anywhere near enough money, training, or time to help them. The city government hated the crazies because they were a threat to the public image of the urban core. Private citizens ignored them at all times of the year except the few charitabl
John Green - Paper Towns
He just waited until I stopped talking and said, 'Jesus, kid, you're almost a detective. All you need now is a gun, a gut, and three ex-wives. So what's your theory?
Edward Conlon - Blue Blood
During voir dire, the interviews for jury selection, each person is asked under oath about their experience with the criminal justice system, as defendant or victim, but usually not even the most elementary effort is made to corroborate those claims. One ADA [Associate District Attorney] told me about inheriting a murder case, after the first jury deadlocked. He checked the raps for the jurors and found that four had criminal records. None of those jurors were prosecuted. Nor was it policy to pr
Deyth Banger -
Stephen King have a lot of books about the writing not only "The Writting: Memoir and Craft", but and "Nightmares and Dreamscapes", however "Misery", also and "Bag of Bones" and even and others. Which is awesome, different perspectives for being a an writer.
Steven Magee -
Police officers seem nice until they start targeting you for stops, give you a bogus speeding ticket and write fake police reports about their interactions with you
Steven Magee -
The police have lost sight of the fact that they are public servants.
William Elias -
Some say the bible teaches that with our tongues we can speak, set things into motion both good and bad, life and death. What we bind and loose on earth will be bound and loosed in heaven.
William Elias -
Ah, you big Nancy, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Seen it many times before. They come and go, boy, never change. It’s the same type from the very beginning. Nothing’s changed except the clothes and technology.
Dorothy B. Hughes - The Expendable Man
There were no passing cars to call out to. You couldn’t call for help from a police car, anyway; he didn’t think you could.
Darnell Lamont Walker -
Dear Police:You can't protect me and be scared of me.
Ravi Howard -
Familiar words for dead black boys portrayed as complicit in their own demise. Michael Donald's body had been hanged on a Mobile street, and the police were doing the same thing to his name.
Chris L. Hayes -
There are fundamentally two ways you can experience the police in America: as the people you call when there's a problem, the nice man in uniform who pats a toddler's head and has an easy smile for the old lady as she buys her coffee. For others, the police are the people who are called on them. They are the ominous knock on the door, the sudden flashlight in the face, the barked orders. Depending on who you are, the sight of an officer can produce either a warm sense of safety and contentment o
Benjamin Spock -
Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.
Steven Magee -
Police officers are poorly paid for a very stressful job that has them in very high powered radio frequency (RF) fields and in a daily environment that may result in them being assaulted, maimed or killed.