Alicia Garza Quotes

It's an issue that we need to have a national discussion about, the militarization of local police forces, and then when they are used to quell peaceful demonstration. Then we have a problem, and especially around this entire case of the murder of Michael Brown at the hands of a Ferguson police officer.

At a policy level, we can support protecting and serving as opposed to militarization or disproportionate response. Step one is making sure we don't militarize and actually call for a review of military equipment in New York police forces.

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.

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

There's a larger conversation we need to have about the role of police officers, their relationship to the people as enemy or executioner, when they're not supposed to be either.

We are demanding police transparency and accountability so we can build trust and work together to make our communities safer.

I know there are those in the community who, rather than have us invest more in policing, even for community policing, instead want us to disinvest in the police department. We need a police department. We are going to have a police department.

I do not support the idea of defunding police departments. I believe that it does nothing to solve the root problems we must address and it makes our communities less safe.

In Baltimore they can't do police work to save their lives. Now because of Freddie Gray they're not even getting out of the car and policing corners - they're on a job slowdown, basically. Right now if the police stopped being brutal, if we got police shooting under control, and the use of excessive force, if we have a meaningful societal response to all that stuff, and the racism that underlies it, the question still remains: what are they policing, and why?

Society questions the police and their methods, and the police say, Do you want the criminals off the street or not?

Let's talk about policing and public safety. Let's debate what works and what does not. We must abandon practices that do not work, and do more of the things that actually do work to save lives.

As mayor, I would support law enforcement, not knock it down.

We have to have a national conversation about how police forces should interact with the African-American community, who happens to be paying their salary, who want to be served and protected, who these officers are take an oath to do so.

When I was a kid the police just whupped you. Today, they whup you, and then they arrest you in order to protect themselves.

There's plenty of law at the end of a nightstick

There are 18,000 different police forces in the United States and sometimes something wrong happens.

We need the cops, especially in the black community.

Police reform is working, and crime is falling.

We can define the rules of police-citizen engagement, but everyday decisions will always be made by men and women in uniform, on the street, in the community, under extreme pressure, in a dangerous world where guns easily fall into the wrong hands.

I no longer believe that we can 'fix' the police, as though the police are anything other than a mirror reflecting back to us the true nature of our democracy.

There's no book to figure out how not to become a victim of police brutality.

The grand jury system - not just in Ferguson, but nationwide - needs a hard look. Millions feel that officers who are trigger-happy are handed a license to shoot - based not on facts, but on stereotypes the officers carry.

I think the only thing that's really going to make a change in terms of how we feel as citizens in terms of safety and our relationship with the police is if we start seeing more federal indictments, arrests, and convictions of police officers.

Police brutality is definitely still very alive and active.

No one's pro-police brutality.