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Law Enforcement Quotes

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Law Enforcement Quotes

“Philando Castile, a school cafeteria worker who frequently paid for the lunches of kids who couldn't afford to eat, was stopped for minor traffic issues fifty-two times before he was stopped for a broken tail light and shot to death by police with his girlfriend filming.”

“If you're an amateur, professional, or aspiring journalist in any city in the U.S., a good story for you would be to dig into the budget and number of employees that your local police department devotes to all forms of public relations. There's a reason they try to hide it.”

“Lawmakers, who rarely have an insight of a truly progressive and civilized society, decide on the perimeters of law based on their biases and knacks, and rarely on actual scientific evidence. It's like asking the blind to show the path. So, for law to be of actual use in the society at our current evolutionary stage, it must be cooked in the vessel of scientific findings with the fire of reasoning and compassion.”

“To the law enforcement officials I say, "uphold not law, but justice, for when you uphold law, you need to explain yourself to your superiors, but when you uphold justice, you do not need to explain your actions to anyone, for your very actions will be the testament of justice".”

“People love to say, nobody is above the law, which is one of the most dangerous delusions of the social psyche. It is a lie fed to the meek citizens of a nation to keep them obedient to the state, even in the face of corruption. Every human is above the law, until the law that governs the society is made incorruptible (or at least close to incorruptible).”

“Law is like a band-aid. Band-aids don't heal the wound, they only prevent further infection while your natural immune system does the healing. Likewise, law doesn't cure crime, it only keeps crime in check, while individual accountability treats the inhumanity that causes crime. And at some point the band-aid must come off, because, just like a body covered in band-aid is the sign of a sick person, a society covered in law is the sign of a sick species.”

“Copaganda leaves the public in a vague state of fear. It manufactures suspicions against poor people, immigrants, and racial minorities rather than, say, bankers, pharmaceutical executives, fraternity brothers, landlords, employers, and polluters.”

“The third job of copaganda is to convince the public to spend more money on the punishment bureaucracy by framing police, prosecutors, probation, parole, and prisons as effective solutions to interpersonal harm. Copaganda links safety to the things the punishment bureaucracy does, while downplaying the connection between safety and the material, structural conditions of people's lives.”

“Cultural copaganda is all around us--from the CIA , starting in the 1950s funding projects like the Iowa Writers' Workshop or fronting literary magazines to influence modern journalism and fiction writing, to the DEA paying Hollywood in the 1990s to insert drug war propaganda into popular television shows, to the vast array of police and military consultants who shape every fictional TV series, podcast, or movie that touches on crime. Shows like COPS and Law & Order have done a lot to distort society's understanding of what the punishment bureaucracy does.”

“The entire genre of police procedurals mythologizes punishment bureaucrats and the allegedly sophisticated technologies they wield. And it's not just Hollywood--fictional copaganda planned and paid for by the police and their industry allies is on TikTok and Youtube, and it's behind many community groups, online posts, neighborhood listserv emails, and charitable campaigns that seem genuine to the unassuming public.”

“The concept and terminology of "mugging" as opposed to, say, "robbery" was created as part of the panic, even though there was no evidence that this ill-defined activity was increasing. This is similar to the creation of the term "carjacking" in Detroit in the early 1990s.”

“On the day Chicago police murdered Laquan McDonald, a seventeen-year-old Black teenager, in 2014, Chicago cops had six full-time public relations employees. As the city fought in court to keep evidence of the child's murder secret and then later to control the uproar when a judge ordered it to release a video of the shooting, Chicago increased its police budget to pay for twenty-five full-time positions devoted to manipulating public information. The 2024 budget funded fifty-five. Chicago is not alone. Cities across the country spend enormous amounts on police PR, and even elected officials are often kept in the dark about it.”

“There is a gulf between the image and reality of the punishment bureaucracy. Copaganda creates that gulf. It is the system of government and news media propaganda that promotes mass incarceration, justifies the barbarities and profits that accompany it, and distorts our sense of what threatens us and what keeps us safe.”

“The first job of copaganda is to narrow our conception of threat. Rather than the bigger threats to our safety caused by people with power, we narrow our conception to crimes committed by the poorest, most vulnerable people in our society.”

“I use the term "punishment bureaucracy" instead of "criminal justice system" because it is a more accurate and less deceptive way to describe the constellation of public and private institutions that develop, enforce, and profit from criminal law.”

“A lawman asking for bribe from a civilian to fulfill certain necessary paperwork, is committing injustice. A pervert who gropes and manhandles a woman in public transportation, is committing injustice. A college student who bullies the newcomers, is committing injustice. These are the injustice committed by ordinary people that occur around the world on a daily basis, all because the people around are either afraid or do not feel responsible enough to stand up to them. If they did, if you do, if only a handful of individuals in every corner of the society stand up to such everyday injustice, then we will witness a revolutionary decline in the very graph of crime and chaos all over the world.”

“Trying to find the proper care in a civilization where only a small part of the population will ever understand what you are going through is a burden many first responders are saddled with. PTSI, injuries, and politics weigh heavily on the officer, yet we continue to turn a blind eye to them. We have made officers into robotic super heroes that aren’t allowed feelings, intellect, or human error. They have been ostracized by society and stripped of their basic human behaviors. We also have yet to admit there are husbands, wives, children, and parents actively involved in these officers’ lives hoping to help them cope with their trauma. Families who do more than make sure they get enough sleep, a hot meal and fresh uniforms in the closet. The faces of the families are yet to be seen.”

“Copyright: a system of monopoly privilege over the expression of ideas that enables government to stop consumer-friendly economic development and reward uncompetitive and legally privileged elites to fleece the public through surreptitious use of coercion.”

“The killing of a police officer has a ripple effect across the nation, even the world. It’s like the wave at a ballgame but you can’t see it if you aren’t at the game. Every law enforcement family in the world is at the game daily, each officer who falls represents one less person in the stadium. The stadium seems smaller each time. Spouses, children and parents breathe a heavy sigh, a sigh filled with grief for the profession and the fallen. A sigh hiding a smaller one that thinks “Thank God it wasn’t mine this time.”

“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 flourish once the rain passes. And they may, until the next rain comes. The weather changes, sometimes without warning. Sometimes you can see it coming, much like the triggers a depressed person avoids, and you try to protect the plants before the storm. The intensity of the labor can get frustrating, especially if there is no relief in sight. One day, a tornado or hurricane passes through. Even though you see it on the horizon, you can’t stop it and you may not be able to seek shelter soon enough. The plants are torn from their roots, the garden completely destroyed. You may have thought you could protect it yourself, that the storm wouldn’t be that bad, or you simply didn’t know how or were afraid to ask for help. Your neighbors and family couldn’t help or didn’t know you needed help. The garden is gone. This is the way of depression; if you don’t have it, it’s very difficult to understand this cycle.”

“Society needs heroes, but most policemen, firemen, and soldiers don’t want to become heroes; they want to be men and women doing their jobs. They want to be supported and understood. Unfortunately, they find the most support and under-standing when death comes in the line of duty. With death comes the onset of the hero label. With the hero title bestowed, everyone seems to know Jason. They won’t ask for permission to speak at his funeral. They will simply do it because they know the person in the coffin would not be there if it weren’t for a position that required them to give their lives for others. People who didn’t know him spoke as if they did, and, while society was claiming its newest hero, Stephanie wanted to grieve alone. More than that, though, she wanted Jason back.”