Quotes & Sayings About Police Corruption

Police throughout the United States have been caught fabricating, planting, and manipulating evidence to obtain convictions where cases would otherwise be very weak. Some authorities regard police perjury as so rampant that it can be considered a "subcultural norm rather than an individual aberration" of police officers. Large-scale investigations of police units in almost every major American city have documented massive evidence of tampering, abuse of the arresting power, and discriminatory enforcement of laws. There also appears to be widespread police perjury in the preparation of reports because police know these reports will be used in plea bargaining. Officers often justify false and embellished reports on the grounds that it metes out a rough justice to defendants who are guilty of wrongdoing but may be exonerated on technicalities. [internal citations omitted] — Dale Carpenter

Kid gets caught with marijuana, that kid has a police record. A Wall Street executive destroys the economy, $5 billion settlement with the government, no criminal record. That is what power is about. That is what corruption is about. And that is what has to change in the United States of America. — Bernie Sanders

I almost forgot to tell you - you have the right to remain silent, but if you do, my boys at the station will process your bones to help you confess. — Rohinton Mistry

If you want to kill someone and get away with it, become a cop. — Steven Magee

Never trust an armed police officer. — Steven Magee

Beware of corporate government cops. — Steven Magee

The old joke is that psychiatrists are doctors who can't stand the sight of blood. Maybe they can't stand it, but if they work where I work, they damn well better get used to it.
At least surgeons and prizefighters get to wear gloves — Mike Bartos

I looked into corruption in Afghanistan through a work called 'Payback' and impersonated a police officer, set up a fake checkpoint on the street in Kabul and stopped cars, but instead of asking them for a bribe, offered them money and apologized on behalf of the Kabul Police Department. — Aman Mojadidi

As Abdul and his family had already learned, the police station was not a place where victimhood was redressed and public safety held dear. It was a hectic bazaar, like many other public institutions in Mumbai, and investigating Kalu's death was not a profit-generating enterprise. — Katherine Boo

And then they would watch her closely as the dark, coagulated masses took form before her eyes, became flesh and bone, became gradually human. For all their show of reluctance, she had a sense that they enjoyed introducing her to these horrors, as seducers took pleasure in the corruption of innocence. — Philip Sington

Money, dished out in quantities fitting the context, is a social lubricant here. It eases passage even as it maintains hierarchies. Fifty naira for the man who helps you back out from the parking spot, two hundred naira for the police officer who stops you for no good reason in the dead of night, ten thousand for the clearing agent who helps you bring your imported crate through customs. For each transaction, there is a suitable amount that helps things on their way. No one else seems to worry, as I do, that the money demanded by someone whose finger hovers over the trigger of a AK-47 is less a tip than a ransom. I feel that my worrying about it is a luxury that few can afford. For many Nigerians, the giving and receiving of bribes, tips, extortion money, or alms
the categories are fluid
is not thought of in moral terms. It is seen either as a mild irritant or as an opportunity. It is a way of getting things done, neither more nor less than what money is there for. — Teju Cole

When the police willfully break the law on video and then deny the event in writing, you know that you are dealing with a blatantly corrupt group of people. — Steven Magee

It is through experience that I have lost faith in USA law enforcement. — Steven Magee

So the only problem that you have is actually switch things in the department, changing things, controlling things, putting it maybe under federal supervision, and if you fix the department, you'll fix the problems - with police corruption, with brutality, with evidence tampering, all those things. — Oren Moverman

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

If you want to routinely break the law and get away with it, then a police officer would be a great career choice for you. — Steven Magee

The corruption in reporting starts very early. It's like the police reporting on the police. — Julian Assange

There's an enormous amount of corruption, and as one American adviser put it to me, "The police in Afghanistan are thugs. We equip them, we train them, and now they are equipped and trained thugs." — Jeff Merkley

The police have lost sight of the fact that they are public servants. — Steven Magee

Police internal affairs are in the business of protecting corrupt and incompetent police officers from prosecution due to the extensive range of laws that they have blatantly broken. — Steven Magee

It is my expectation that if I call 911 for the police that I will be blatantly harassed. — Steven Magee

Police are inevitably corrupted ... Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available. — Frank Herbert

The point is, our health-care system is a terrible mess. It's expensive, wasteful, inefficient, unresponsive, and infested with lawyers. Which is why there has been a big push, in some quarters, to place it under the management of...
The federal government.
This is like saying that if your local police department has a corruption problem, the solution is to turn law enforcement over to the Sopranos. — Dave Barry

I have no confidence in USA law enforcement. — Steven Magee

It's like this with us baby. We're coppers and everybody hates our guts ... nothing we do is right, not ever. If we get a confession we beat it out of a guy, they say, and some shyster lawyer calls us Gestapo. — Raymond Chandler

Western police officers are an arguably corrupt group of people that have rigged the system to make them almost untouchable. — Steven Magee

The organized domestic terrorism of the general public is why many people regard the police as corrupt. — Steven Magee

The fraudulent electrical utility company in conjunction with the corrupt sheriff taught me that an Englishman's home is not his castle — Steven Magee

The police frequently do not enforce the rule of law. — Steven Magee

The sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church is the result of what police call "noble cause corruption," the belief that because you are dedicated to doing good, you can do no wrong. — Alex Gibney

It is the common peoples duty to police the police. — Steven Magee

IN AN OLD YUGOSLAV JOKE mocking police corruption, a policeman returns home unexpectedly and finds his wife naked in their marital bed, obviously hot and excited. Suspecting that he surprised her with a lover, he starts to look around the room for a hidden man. The wife goes pale when he leans down to look under the bed; but after some brief whispering, the husband rises with a satisfied, smug smile and says "Sorry, my love, false alarm. There is no one under the bed!," while his hand is holding tightly a couple of high denomination banknotes. — Slavoj Zizek

The first view is "bad apple." Bad apple is excusable. It's sort of like, something went bad with this man. But the second option is police corruption, so it's a problem with the department. — Oren Moverman

It is my assessment that most police officers who spend their days driving around USA cities will have some level
of radiation sickness and this is concerning! — Steven Magee

Dear God, please help me to be the kind of person who my dogs think I am. — Jerrie Brock

...I never once believed what they wanted us to believe - that we as black people are inferior to whites... — Darcus Howe

There is no shortage of despicable law enforcement departments in the USA. — Steven Magee

There was a ringing in his ears, like a dead phone line that he couldn't hang up on. — Mark Capell

Nobody wants zealotry in a police force, you know? You do want to know that the guy who's got that badge, is confident enough to judge a certain level of benign corruption. Like a man steals some food to feed his starving children. — Russell Crowe

Rather to my surprise, I found myself genuinely indignant at the suggestion that murder was to be reintroduced as a means of political advancement for the first time since the Tudors, and even more indignant that the legal and political establishments in all their forms - which included, at that stage, the police - were going to cover up the whole episode. In the event, it turned out that my anxieties were unfounded, as Thorpe was totally innocent of all charges brought against him. — Auberon Waugh

If there was special interests affecting police work, I believe that would be called corruption. So, if it has do with donating money versus a popular vote, I think we have a bigger problem in this country and somebody's gotta wake up to that. — Garry McCarthy