Quotes About Police

It's legitimate for the police to use violence because they are enforcing the law; the law is legitimate because it's rooted in the constitution; the constitution is legitimate because it comes from the people; the people created the constitution by acts of illegal violence. The obvious question, then: How does one tell the difference between "the people" and a mere rampaging mob?

So: Police are bureaucrats with weapons. If you think about it, this is a really ingenious trick. Because when most of think about police, we do not think of them as enforcing regulation. We think of them as fighting crime, and when we think of "crime," the kind of crime we have in our minds in violent crime. Even though, in fact, what police mostly do is exactly the opposite: they bring the threat of force to bear on situations that would otherwise have nothing to do with it.

Jim Cooper, a former LAPD officer turned sociologist, has observed that the overwhelming majority of those who end up getting beaten or otherwise brutalized by police turn out to be innocent of any crime. "Cops don't beat up burglars," he writes. The reason, he explained, is simple: the one thing most guaranteed to provoke a violent reactions from police is a challenge to their right to, as he puts is, "define the situation." (p. 80)

There's a reason why, in English, the words 'politics' 'polite' and 'police' all sound the same – they're all derived from the Greek word polis, or city, the Latin equivalent of which is civitas, which also gives us 'civility,' 'civic' and a certain modern understanding of 'civilization'.

The problem with police work, he once told Ray Jenkins, was that by its nature it tended to attract a certain percentage of sadistic people, who enjoyed the job because it legitimized their natural meanness. So, he added, the first thing any good police chief had to do was set the limits for his

encouraging applicants to reflect on why they wanted to join the police and why it mattered to their community – boosted the pass rate of minority group applicants by 50 per cent, while leaving white applicants unaffected.

One of the most important weapons in Hitler's police state was controlled however by Hermann Göring, not Himmler. This was the Forschungsamt, or 'Research Office,' set up in 1933 with a monopoly on all wiretapping operations.

For whatever reason, speed enforcement in the U.S. is a bigger deal than elsewhere in the world. In Europe, police seem to be more concerned about preventing accidents and less consumed with the passion to write speeding tickets.

Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder 'censorship,' we call it 'concern for commercial viability.

There are cultures that produce different kinds of attitudes, whether it's religion, fatalism, sense of fear, repression, the culture of God and the police minimizes confidence in people.

I wonder why no one called the police about the rocket launcher? God knows my neighbors usually report it if I so much as fart in my backyard. (Bubba)

Cameras have really made people question the police. People, especially white people, are saying, 'Oh my God, we had no idea.'

While police officers who blatantly shaft the common people believe that they are God, they are the Devil to those that they wrong.

The cops drive by to do some more good deeds A young black male spits a sunflower seed in the air.

A girl who bonnets a policeman with an ashcan full of bottles is obviously good wife-and-mother timber.

The objective of the demonstrators is to win the affection of the armed agents of the government... Most of the Kiev police have now pledged their support for the people...

International institutions are composed of governments. Governments control their own military forces and police.

[I]f you want instant, reflexive support for the US government's police and military powers, MSNBC is the place to turn these days.

The corporation is not a person; it is a legal fiction backed up by guns and police and jail cells and taxing authorities and the regulators called government.

Over the years, Western governments have been criticized for working with foreign police who have proved abusive or corrupt.

The police force cannot be completely independent of the executive government.

I know the police cause you troubleThey cause trouble everywhereBut when you die and go to heavenYou find no policeman there

A police force, wherever they are, is made up of amazing people, and I respect them a great deal.