Police Quotes

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?

~ Terry Pratchett

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

You couldn't be satisfied with being an amateur asshole, could you, Jimbo! You had to go and turn pro on me!

~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

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.

~ Barry Eisler

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.

~ Lewis Black

Today I wore a pair of faded old jeans and a plain grey baggy shirt. I hadn't even taken a shower, and I did not put on an ounce of makeup. I grabbed a worn out black oversized jacket to cover myself with even though it is warm outside. I have made conscious decisions lately to look like less of what I felt a male would want to see. I want to disappear.

~ Sierra D. Waters

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.

~ Raymond Chandler

If you're going to hit a car, try to be sure that it's not a cop car

~ Judy Gold

It is through experience that I have lost faith in USA law enforcement.

~ Steven Magee

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 of police brutality, but the rising crime rate and urban violence constitute a far, far more pressing problem.

~ Truman Capote

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 thrill.

~ Benson Bruno

They found records and video-cassettes at their place, a deck of cards, a chess set. In other words, everything that's banned.

~ Marjane Satrapi

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

Western police officers are an arguably corrupt group of people that have rigged the system to make them almost untouchable.

~ 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.

~ Steven Magee

Police officers are among the most corrupt people that I have encountered in life.

~ Steven Magee

A cop's JOB is to violently enforce upon the rest of us whatever arbitrary bullshit the political parasites declare to be law. It is, therefore, impossible to be a law enforcer and behave morally, for the same reason one can't be a moral car-jacker.

~ Larken Rose

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 least to inform yourself about power. Beyond that, it is a question of whether you believe in moral certainties or not.

~ Noam Chomsky

The 'thin blue line' is nothing more than the no snitching policy found in any other criminal gang.

~ Dane Whalen

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...

~ Raymond Chandler

There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.

~ Gore Vidal

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.

~ George Stamatis

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 uprising–that granted them their right to use force to begin with?

~ David Graeber

The Democratic Party would like to be re-elected so that they can continue to uphold almost no Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) whistle-blower complaints, enforce hardly any police internal affairs allegations, and corrupt corporations with lobbyists can continue operating outside of the law.

~ Steven Magee

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.

~ Dane Whalen

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.

~ Julián Leyzaola

I never think of policemen's wives, their beauty maddens me like wine.

~ Kyril Bonfiglioli

Reading isn't an occupation we encourage among police officers. We try to keep the paperwork down to a minimum.

~ Joe Orton

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 rank of Chief of Detectives, and had a reputation of being tough, and not someone you could mess with. Having a baldhead and the general appearance of Telly Savalas, the late Hollywood movie actor, I don’t think anyone did. An action story and part of my grandfather’s legacy was when he chased a felon across the rooftops of prewar Hamburg, firing his Dienstpistole, service revolver, as he made his way from one steep inclined slate roof to the next.Of course, Grandpa got his man! Even with this factual tidbit, there isn’t all that much I know about him, other than that, at the then ripe old age of sixty-four, he peacefully died in his chair while reading the evening newspaper.

~ Captain Hank Bracker

Corrupt and incompetent police officers have a long history of being protected by their colleagues, police internal affairs and the government.

~ Steven Magee

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?

~ Philip Dray

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.

~ Ann Medlock

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.

~ Steven Magee

A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of green paper.

~ Derrick Jensen

The best thing to do when someone is trying to argue with you is to repeatedly state Stay Away and video record the entire event. You may need that video for the police afterwords when the aggressor starts fabricating fantasies about the event.

~ Steven Magee

Nation needs soldiers, politics needs civilians.

~ Amit Kalantri

Intimidated, old traumas triggered, and fearing for my safety, I did what I felt I needed to do.

~ Sierra D. Waters

John was still making comments regarding violent things that he shouldn't, but I hoped he was just being a big mouth. Nobody was going to listen to me anyway.

~ Sierra D. Waters