Police Quotes

Police not enforcing laws results in a high crime rate that is formally reported as a low crime rate in police statistics.

~ Steven Magee

A good Policeman/woman looks for crimes. A bad policeman/woman looks for opportunity.

~ Richard Diaz

There are not so many murders in this township, I think to myself, and not so few policemen, that a killing should be treated like an old woman who has lost her cat.

~ Jonny Steinberg

Unfortunately, it doesn’t ever really matter what the truth is. Only what they think it is.

~ Kenneth Eade

Constable N stepped away from the car, into the darkness where Darren could not see where his gun was pointing, and fired two rounds into the air. The gunshots cracked the roof of the night sky and echoed back at us. My first thought was that they could be heard all over Toekomsrus; I wondered how many imaginations had in that instant conjured a different story to explain the gunshots; a record of all those stories, I found myself thinking, would probably document every fear this place has of itself and its young men.

~ Jonny Steinberg

About a year ago, an entire suburb in this man’s jurisdiction turned from the police and erected a substitute agency. To all intents and purposes, several thousand people here have severed their relationship with the South African Police Service. He appears not to have noticed.

~ Jonny Steinberg

It's like this with us baby. We're coppers and everybody hates our guts....nothing we do is right, not ever. If we get a confession we beat it out of a guy, they say, and some shyster lawyer calls us Gestapo.

~ Raymond Chandler

He didn't know the right people. That's all a police record means in this rotten crime-ridden country.

~ Raymond Chandler

The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane Neighborly Disputes (SO-30) and going onto Literary Detectives (SO-27) and Art Crime (SO-24). Anything below SO-20 was restricted information, although it was common knowledge that the ChronoGuard was SO-12 and Antiterrorism SO-9. It is rumored that SO-1 was the department that polices the SpecOps themselves. Quite what the others do is anyone's guess. What is known is that the individual operatives themselves are mostly ex-military or ex-police and slightly unbalanced. 'If you want to be a SpecOp,' the saying goes, 'act kinda weird...

~ Jasper Fforde

I saw her sign the register, but her name isn't on it any more. The bellboy says he never saw her. Now they've got me so I'm scared and shaky, like a little kid is of the dark. I want you men to help me. Won't you men help me?''We'll help you' - said the lieutenant in charge. Slowly, awfully slowly; I didn't like that slowness - 'if we're able to.' And I knew what he meant; if we find any evidence that your story is true.(All At Once, No Alice)

~ Cornell Woolrich

I thought part of the idea of having therapy was putting one in touch with his or her feelings. And don’t give me all that about transference, and counter-transference and all that. I know what I feel. And it has nothing to do with all that. And you also feel for me. And if you don’t know that, then maybe it’s you who needs to have therapy to gain a better knowledge of yourself.

~ Olga Núñez Miret

It’s…The only way I can get on with my life is by forgetting what went on before. Dave used to tell me that I didn’t have control over what the bastard of my father did to me, and that he’d been punished for it, and I might as well concentrate on the rest of my life, because over that…I had some control and I could decide what to do. I could change it over; I could become anything I wanted if I just tried hard enough.

~ Olga Núñez Miret

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

~ George Orwell

The first drops of rain started to fall.'God's policemen,' said Jester. 'You what?' 'The police always used to pray for rain before any big demonstration because people wouldn't turn up. Nobody wants to run riot in the streets if it's pouring with rain. Who's going to want to fight in this?

~ Charlie Higson

In the era of angry and aggressive policing, it is an honorable service to your fellow citizens to video record police officers interactions with the common people.

~ 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.

~ Steven Magee

We'd like to think that it is not our fault that great men and women died fighting for the security of our nation and safety of our communities. But we know this not to be true. They commited their lives for us in instances where either we were too afraid to do it ourselves or failed to find alternate solutions on our own. We enjoy the fruits of their ultimate sacrifice and owe their families a heartfelt thanks and apology everyday.

~ D'andre Lampkin

We'd like to think that it is not our fault great men and women died fighting for the security of our nation and safety of our communities. But we know this not to be true. They commited their lives for us in instances where either we were too afraid to do it ourselves or failed to find alternate solutions on our own. We enjoy the fruits of their ultimate sacrifice and owe their families a heartfelt thanks and apology everyday.

~ D'andre Lampkin

Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use... Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce [28g] of marijuana.

~ Jimmy Carter

That's what everyone thinks--they think being a cop is about punishing people for doing wrong. But that's not true. You know it isn't. It's about believing in people, believing in the good. In the will of people to do what's right despite their own instincts.

~ Scott Snyder

Approaching a police car is a very dangerous activity to engage in.

~ Steven Magee

Would you approach a crazy person with a loaded gun? Well, that is exactly what you are doing with some police officers when you approach them.

~ Steven Magee

I am far more fearful of the police than I am of North Korea.

~ Steven Magee

The most dangerous thing in life is an incompetent that has been given a gun and a law enforcement badge.

~ Steven Magee

To exist as an interpreter of the law, you first have to follow that law yourself. Law is the glue that holds society together. It's flawed, but absolute, and corruption only hinders its progress.

~ Rebecca Mcnutt

When placing an emergency call, it is important to remember that a corrupt or incompetent cop may be on their way to you.

~ Steven Magee

The police frequently do not enforce the rule of law.

~ Steven Magee

It is my expectation that if I call 911 for the police that I will be blatantly harassed.

~ Steven Magee

If you want to kill someone and get away with it, become a cop.

~ Steven Magee

There is no shortage of despicable law enforcement departments in the USA.

~ Steven Magee

When it is a law abiding common person versus the police internal affairs regarding a corrupt or incompetent police officer, the statistics show that it is the common person that most frequently loses.

~ Steven Magee

If you need a gun to do it with, you aren't doing it right. Sheriff Bud Smith.

~ James Hickey

Most laws only exist if people believe in them. That's why the mass media has to propagate them. If you are wise enough, join the police and ignore unfair laws. Be the friend and helper instead and thereby increase the reputation of the police.

~ L.h.

I have interacted with the police complaints and internal affairs division twice and both times I came away with the opinion that I was dealing with a blatantly corrupt group of people.

~ Steven Magee

The law don’t like jazz clubs. No one wants anything to do with that kind of trouble.

~ Sara Sheridan

It has always struck me that one of the readiest ways of estimating a country's regard for law is to notice what arms the officers of the law are carrying: in England it is little batons, in France swords, in many countries revolvers, and in Russia the police used to have artillery.

~ Lord Dunsany

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.

~ Simone Weil

I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy...But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head...The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you.From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country--not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society--cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.

~ Howard Zinn

Changing entrenched systems is daunting; the odds against reshaping the nation's police forces are high. But there are few things more important than making sure their profession is the brave, honorable service it should be. We have to do it, or watch our communities and our democracy disintegrate.

~ Ann Medlock

Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.

~ Benjamin Spock