William Lacy Clay Jr. Quotes

I went to Ferguson and walked with the demonstrators and saw this heavily armed police force, tactical units pointing sniper rifles at my constituents who were there exercising their constitutional rights.

When you loot or behave violently, you give grounds to those that try to justify illegal police abuse. You become the poster child for them to say, 'See, we have no choice but to shoot and kill, or use a chokehold, because just look at the way they behave.'

Hundreds of policemen and detectives, swinging nightsticks, blackjacks, and bare fists, rushed into the crowd, hitting out at all with whom they came into contract, chasing many across the street and into adjacent thoroughfares and pushing hundreds off their feet. From all parts of the scene of battle came the screams of women and cries of men with bloody heads and faces.

Nearly every day on the television set the hero cop breaks into the bad guy’s house and beats a confession out of him and we cheer on the cop. Propaganda smears our clear vision. It causes us to accept the diminishment of our constitutional protections as something to be lauded — after all, the cop was protecting us.

The police seemed to lose their head completely as they dashed into the crowds on their horses and slashed out with their clubs.

During the Umbrella Movement, the police force wasn't in control, and the police ignored the law and tried to use extreme force to hurt people.

I can't believe that OMON [Russia's riot police] would hit a girl. I simply can't imagine it.

No one knew what Rodney King had done beforehand to be stopped. No one realized that he was a parolee and that he was violating his parole. No one knew any of those things. All they saw was this grainy film and police officers hitting him over the head.

My accident happened in what should have been one of the safest places to be: in a police station, at the hands of trained police officers. So more guns are not the answer.

I was knocked down and dragged by a police Land Rover in a hit-and-run.

A recent police study found that you're much more likely to get shot by a fat cop if you run.

We need to work for a day when police shootings are rare and not the stuff of our daily news.

the Mayor of the city [John T. Monroe], during my absence, suppressed the Convention by the use of their police force, and in so doing attacked the members of the Convention and a party of two hundred negroes, and with fire-arms, clubs, and knives, in a manner so unnecessary and atrocious as to compel me to say that it was murder. About forty whites and blacks were thus killed, and about one hundred and sixty wounded. Everything is now quiet, but I deem it best to maintain a military supremacy in the city for a few days until the affair is fully investigated, IT WAS NOT RIOT. IT WAS AN ABSOLUTE MASSACRE BY THE POLICE, WHICH WAS NOT EXCELLED IN MURDEROUS CRUELTY BY THAT OF FORT PILLOW. IT WAS A MURDER WHICH THE MAYOR AND POLICE OF THE CITY PERPETRATED WITHOUT THE SHADOW OF NECESSITY.

When the cops are trying to arrest you, if you fight back, things go wrong.

I just couldn't believe that the police would fire tear gas into what had been a peaceful protest. I was running around, face burning, and nothing I saw looked like America to me.

Police cannot be allowed to continue aggressive, violent, and often unconstitutional policing with impunity.

No one's pro-police brutality.

Stop and frisk - whether done while walking down the street or while driving a car - is a civil rights violation.

It's a tragedy. It was tragedy for Freddie Gray and the family. It was a tragedy for the city. And we're still trying to figure out how it happened and why it happened.

It was my long-held belief that police brutality would increase under the Trump administration.

When law enforcement violates departmental policies or operates outside of its certified training, it should not be insulated from liability to the victims of these breaches.

The police have the right to prosecute people, but not use violence.

There is nothing just or fair about what happened to Jordan Edwards. And his story is yet another in a long line of tragedies that now powerfully remind us of the long way we still have to go in creating a fair and just relationship between law enforcement, our criminal justice system, and the public our laws are supposed to protect.

Being a cop is often seeing the worst of the human condition and behavior. With all of that said, there is no reason that Mike Brown and also Eric Garner are dead today - except bad policing, excessive force, and the hunt-and-capture-prey mentality many thrill-seeking cops have adapted.

We should limit qualified immunity and change the standard for bringing cases against officers who violate victims' civil and Constitutional rights.