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Police Brutality Quotes

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Police Brutality Quotes

“It's an insidious thing," Wanda said. "It never happens overnight. This kind of thing crept into our community a long time ago. It latched on. It fed on prejudice. Selfishness. Peoples inability to see life through someone else's eyes. And it grew, bigger and bigger, until we got to a point where some people don't even question why a cop should be allowed to shoot first and ask questions later.”

RacismPoliceProtestRebellionGun ControlPolice BrutalityLawsCopsAnger Is A Gift
Book:Anger Is a Gift
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“Apart from their role in destroying those organizing for progressive social change, the police are and have always been central to protecting private concentrations of wealth through selective enforcement of the law; gentrification, unlawful redlining; evictions; immigration enforcement and the management of migrants fleeing the effects of global U.S. policy; civil forfeiture; and many other forms of exclusion and predation. And they are preparing to play a central role in the enforcement of anti-democratic voter restriction laws sweeping the country, as well as laws banning books from libraries and anti-trans laws.”

CensorshipPolice BrutalityGentrificationCopagandaThe Mafia In BlueRedliningEvictionsPolice Supression
Book:Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News
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“Bennie's corner of Brooklyn looked different every time Sierra passed through it. She stopped at the corner of Washington Avenue and St. John's Place to take in the changing scenery. A half block from where she stood, she'd skinned her knee playing hopscotch while juiced up on iceys and sugar drinks. Bennie's brother, Vincent, had been killed by the cops on the adjacent corner, just a few steps from his own front door. Now her best friend's neighborhood felt like another planet. The place Sierra and Bennie used to get their hair done had turned into a fancy bakery of some kind, and yes, the coffee was good, but you couldn't get a cup for less than three dollars. Plus, every time Sierra went in, the hip, young white kid behind the counter gave her either the don't-cause-no-trouble look or the I-want-to-adopt-you look. The Takeover (as Bennie had dubbed it once) had been going on for a few years now, but tonight its pace seemed to have accelerated tenfold. Sierra couldn't find a single brown face on the block. It looked like a late-night frat party had just let out; she was getting funny stares from all sides--as if she was the out-of-place one, she thought. And then, sadly, she realized she was the out-of-place one.”

RacismPolice BrutalityGentrification
Book:Shadowshaper
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“Even innocent people find themselves in trouble, Adolfina is innocent. We're all innocent. The only ones at fault for the bad things that are happening are the authorities. They with their way of being. Their behavior. Yes, the only ones who go to jail or end up wounded or dead along the roads are the poor. And that's because the authorities have a predilection--they know who to hassle. They exist to boss the poor around. To order the poor about, to beat up on the poor and to carry them off as if they were animals. Someday the good life they're living will end. Always doing it to the people, always. They've never suffered the slightest hurt. That's where they get their pride from. Once they're in uniform they think they're kings of the world, and they themselves say they're disposed to anything”

Police BrutalityAuthoritarianismPolice StateEl Salvador
Book:One Day of Life
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“Guadalupe Fuentes: --They're not paid to kill honest people, to shoot for no good reasons. Rubenia Fuentes: --Ah, my little girl, then why do you think they give them those big guns that look like tree branches and are larger than they themselves? To shoot, baby, to shoot. Because if they don't, that gives rise to talk that the authorities are useless, are nothing more than decoration.”

ViolenceAuthorityPolicePolice BrutalityPolice StateEl Salvador
Book:One Day of Life
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“The guardsmen dragged him to the Detour; the mules they had ridden were there. The corpse was buried near here or the buzzards ate it. The authorities were laughing as they left. One could see the laughter in their eyes, the only place where they are allowed to laugh. Because the authorities cannot laugh. It is prohibited; at least they never laugh with their mouths. They're made to denounce, interrogate and capture. Laughing is a weakness. They themselves say, 'Laughter abounds among fools.' An official must not show any weakness before a civilian, otherwise he'll thereby lose precisely his authority. The authorities are short on words; they don't want to lose their strength by speaking to civilians. They act. That's the only way they can defend property, which is sacred. That's why many of them are paid by landowners. How big a bonus they get depends on how well they behave.”

DeathCapitalismPolice BrutalityPrivate PropertyPolice StateEl SalvadorDeath By Police
Book:One Day of Life
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“We have to be well fed, the gringo tells us, so we can defend the country. In exchange for these pleasures, we cannot let these people down. One must be ready to defend the country against its enemies even at the expense of our own brothers. And, though it's unnecessary to say so, even at the expense of our mother. This might seem like an exaggeration, but the Western world is in danger and we know that the worst danger to the Western world is what they call 'the people.' The trainer shouts, 'Who is our worst enemy?' And we shout, 'The people!' And so on and so on, 'Who is the worst enemy of democracy?' And we all respond, 'The people!' Louder, he says. And we shout with all our might, 'The people, the people, the people." I'm telling you this in the strictest confidence, of course. They call us the Special Forces.”

PolicePolice BrutalityAuthoritarianismEl Salvador
Book:One Day of Life
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“Police Officer Angry Aggression Theory (POAAT) is why you need to video record the police before they shoot you. Always start the video camera at the first contact, as it can go sour at any time and without warning.”

TimeFireTheoryGunPoliceAngryVideoContactShootingWarningAggressionPolice BrutalityPolicemenSheriffPolice OfficerSourStartFirearmsGunsAlwaysPolice CorruptionPolice StateFirstOfficerShooterPolicemanWithoutBeforeCameraRecordShootAnyFirearmPoaat
Author:Steven Magee
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“The Empowered Sonnet Woman empowered is civilization empowered. Dream empowered is progress empowered. Parents empowered is children empowered. Teachers empowered is future empowered. Don't defund the police, use those funds, To send the officers to behavioral therapy. To have an understanding of justice and order, We must have a grip over our impulses and biases. Discrimination don't disappear if we shut our eyes, Each of us must live as an antidote to discrimination. Ignorance doesn't become knowledge when peddled by scripture, Better burn all scriptures if they peddle hate and division. To conquer our biases and stereotypes is to conquer inhumanity. To expand our heart beyond assumption is to empower humanity.”

FeministDiscriminationHuman BehaviorPolice BrutalityStereotypesBiasesHumanist PoetryPursuit Of DreamsLife PoemWoman Empowerment
Book:High Voltage Habib: Gospel of Undoctrination
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“A white police officer had entered a black women's home without a warrant, searching for a suspect. When she protested, he beat and arrested her, dragging her from her home though she wasn't fully dressed. When a black soldier saw this and tried to intervene to defend the woman, the white policeman pistol-whipped the black soldier, seriously injuring him. The men of the beaten soldier's regiment, learning no consequences would befall the white policeman, felt abandoned by white police and army officials. They saw the abuse as a last straw in a long string of injustices. So the marched into the city. Soldiers and civilians died in the shooting that followed”

RaceBlack Lives MatterPolice BrutalityBlm
Book:Lovely War
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“As much as they were concerned about the police, the Panthers also took seriously the threat of crime and sought to address the fears of the community they served. With this in mind, they organized Seniors Against a Fearful Environment (SAFE), an escort and bussing service in which young Black people accompanied the elderly on their business around the city. In Los Angeles, when the Party opened an office on Central Avenue, they immediately set about running the drug dealers out of the area. And in Philadelphia, neighbors reported a decrease in violent crime after the Party opened their office, and an increase after the office closed. There, the BPP paid particular attention to gang violence, organizing truces and recruiting gang members to help with the survival programs. It may be that the Panthers reduced crime by virtue of their very existence. Crime, and gang violence especially, dropped during the period of their activity, in part (in the estimate of sociologist Lewis Yablonsky) because the BPP and similar groups “channeled young black and Chicano youth who might have participated in gangbanging violence into relatively positive efforts for social change through political activities.”

Black Lives MatterPolice BrutalityBlmPanthersPolice ViolenceGang ViolenceBlack Panthers
Book:Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America
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“I grew up in a neighborhood that was impoverished and in pain and bore all the modern-day outcomes of communities left without resources and yet supplied with tools of violence. But when someone in my neighborhood committed a crime, let alone a murder, all of us were held accountable, my God. Metal detectors, searchlights, and constant police presence, full-scale sweeps of kids just walking home from school--all justified by politicians and others who said they represented our needs. Where were these representatives when white guys shot us down?”

Police BrutalityJustice SystemBlmCarceral StatePatrisse Khan Cullors
Book:When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
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“People were upset about Trump's win in 2016 because he ran a campaign promising to implement policies that targeted racial and ethnic minorities with state violence (and he did) not simply because he was mean or rude. In no sense is Biden's campaign comparable. Sorry! Biden won't be banning Christians, arbitrarily revoking the status of white immigrants here because of natural disasters, trying to sell off white populated parts of the country or encouraging police brutality against white people. Your disappointment is not oppression. (11/9/2020 on Twitter)”

TrumpOppressionImmigrantsPolice BrutalityDonald TrumpWhite PrivilegeBiden2020 ElectionJoe BidenWhite Americans
Author:Adam Serwer
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“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 or a plummeting feeling of terror.”

RacismPolicePolice BrutalityInstitutionalized Racism
Book:A Colony in a Nation
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“Where conflicts arise between workers and bosses, between the rights of one class and the interests of the other, the machinery of the law is typically used as a weapon against the workers. Even where the law is contrary to the demands of powerful corporations, the police often act not from principle or legal obligation, but according to the needs of the ruling class. This tendency shouldn’t surprise us, if we remember the lengths to which the cops have gone in the defense of White supremacy, even as laws and policies have changed. With class, as with race, it is the status quo that the police act to preserve and the interests of the powerful that they seek to defend, not the rule of law or public safety. The law, in fact, has been a rather weak guide for those who are meant to enforce it.”

PoliceUnionsWorking ClassPolice BrutalityUnionPolice StateState BrutalityWorkers Union
Book:Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America
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“Police activism, especially in the guise of union activity, remains somewhat perplexing. The historical development is clear enough, but politically it is troublesome—especially for the left. The whole issue presents a nest of paradoxes: the police have unionized and gone on strike—but continue in their role as strikebreakers. They have pitted themselves against their bosses and the government, but represent a threat to democracy rather than an expression of it. They have resisted authority for the sake of authoritarian aims, have broken laws in the name of law and order, and have demanded rights that they consistently deny to others. (...) Police associations thus developed in relative isolation from the rest of the labor movement, while building close ties with the command hierarchy within the departments. This fact points to two related reasons why police unions are not legitimate labor unions. First, as is discussed above, the police are clearly part of the managerial machinery of capitalism. Their status as “workers” is therefore problematic. Second, the agendas of police unions mostly reflect the interests of the institution (the police department) rather than those of the working class.”

UnionsWorking ClassPolice BrutalityUnionPolice StateState BrutalityWorkers Union
Book:Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America
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“If you want to make the police uncomfortable, all you need to do is ask this question: How many complaints does police internal affairs receive annually and how many complaints does it actually uphold?”

PoliceUncomfortableComplaintsPolice BrutalityPolicemenQuestionPolice OfficerPolice CorruptionPolice StateAffairsInternalPolicemanReceivePolice ReformPolice ProceduralComplaintPolice ServiceActuallyUpholdUncomfortable TruthAnnuallyComplaint DeptUncomfortable QuoteUncomfortable Quotes
Author:Steven Magee
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“Police intentionally murdering a mentally unstable person will always be unacceptable when there are numerous other non-lethal options available to them.”

MurderPoliceMental HealthAvailableMental IllnessMentalPersonPolice BrutalityPolicemenSheriffPolice OfficerUnstableAlwaysPolice CorruptionPolice StateMental DisorderOptionsThemPolicemanPolice ReformPolice ProceduralPolice ServiceMental DisordersOptionNumerousLethalUnacceptableIntentionallyOptions QuotesMurderingNon Lethal
Author:Steven Magee
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“Police not enforcing laws results in a high crime rate that is formally reported as a low crime rate in police statistics.”

LawResultsCrimePoliceRateReportsStatisticsEnforcementPolice BrutalityPolicemenHighPolice OfficerNotLawsPolice CorruptionPolice StateLegal SystemResultPolicemanReportingPolice ReformPolice ProceduralPolice ServiceLowReportResults QuotesReportedEnforceStatistics QuotesStatistical AnalysisFormallyEnforcingEnforcing Laws
Author:Steven Magee
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