Quotes & Sayings About Police Force

I realize I will always be the poster child for police brutality, but I can try to use that as a positive force for healing and restraint. — Rodney King

At last he said, "I've been fourteen years on the police force. I've learned from seasoned veterans. I've handled all types of criminal cases. But my wife, newly arrived from the backwoods of Ireland, manages to tie up all my unsolved cases for me with apparently no effort at all. I should just quit my job and stay home looking after the babies while you go out to work for us. — Rhys Bowen

I have long believed the city, the country, indeed the world at large to be run by precisely the wrong kind of people. From the government to the great financial institutions, the peerage to the police force, our lives are controlled without exception by the stupid and greedy, the venal, the rapacious and the undeservedly rich. How much more comfortable would it be if the rulers of the world were not the cognoscenti of the bank balance, the ballot box, the offshore account, but were drawn instead from the ranks of the everyday - honest, kind, stout-hearted, commonplace folk. — Jonathan Barnes

First of all, we occupied Afghanistan and Iraq and I'm not even talking about the past occupation of them, I'm just talking about currently. And we all know that occupations, in military terms, comes down basically to policing, so you have an army basically functioning as a police force in these foreign territories as part of foreign policy. I'm not knocking that down, I'm just observing. — Oren Moverman

A concrete example of this mechanism is found in one of the most alarming phenomena of the last thirty years: the enormous increase in the police force of all countries. The increase of population has inevitably rendered it necessary. However accustomed we may be to it, the terrible paradox should not escape our minds that the population of a great modern city, in order to move about peaceably and attend to its business, necessarily requires a police force to regulate the circulation. But it is foolishness for the party of "law and order" to imagine that these "forces of public authority" created to preserve order are always going to be content to preserve the order that that party desires. Inevitably they will end by themselves defining and deciding on the order they are going to impose- which, naturally, will be that which suits them best. — Ortega Y Gasset

For some stupid reason, I had this irrational need to prove to Cooper that I could inspect dead bodies over black coffee and maple bars just like him and the other guys on the police force.
(Violet Parker) — Ann Charles

When we were talking about this, an idea for this master vigilante, it was an urban guerilla. One of my ideas was that he would be a member of the police force who turned on the government. — David Lloyd

Grandeur. chapter seventeen Harrison Tibble was a thirty-five-year vet on the police force. — J.D. Robb

It's much easier to force intermediary communications and Internet companies such as Google to police themselves and their users than the alternatives: sending cops after everybody who attempts a risque or politically sensitive search, getting parents and teachers to do their jobs, or chasing down the origin of every offending link. — Rebecca MacKinnon

But we don't have to react. That's what I'm saying. A police force, like a government, should be above that. Just because we're provoked doesn't mean we have to act.
Still Life — Louise Penny

The following month two further allegations against Huntley had been reported to social services by the families of other girls. On no occasion was there evidence upon which to prosecute Huntley. They say there is none so blind as those that refuse to see. I say there is none so blind as North East Lincolnshire Social Services and the Humberside Police Force. — Stephen Richards

The notion that we've made vast moral progress and are now a less violent species is belied by our awesome powers of destruction, our military might, police forces as well-armed as soldiers. Without the threat of such violent force behind it, all law would be meaningless. I prefer stories that remind us of that. At its core, history is a story of violence at work. It all comes down to the old saw that, however much you can gain with a kind word, you can gain more with a kind word and a gun. — James Carlos Blake

If a responsible, mentally sound American wants to own and AR-15, that's their right. Besides, when the zombies come ... okay, you don't like the zombie thing. When the Chinese invade our country, who do you want to depend on? The over-extended police force and the National Guard? Or the next door neighbor who's a former Marine and has enough guns and ammunition for your entire block? — Aaron B. Powell

It takes time. There are milestones, but so many people are traveling along that road at their own pace, and some come along later, and others are trying to stop everyone who's moving forward, and a few are marching backward or are confused about what direction they should go in. Even in our own lives we regress, fail, continue, try again, get lost, and sometimes make a great leap, find what we didn't know we were looking for, and yet continue to contain contradictions for generations. (Pandora's Box and the Volunteer Police Force) — Rebecca Solnit

Outside of the musical knowledge and exposure, Coltrane also apprenticed in the daily struggles of black musicians on the road. Segregation was a dominant factor in the majority of performance venues, as well as the surrounding geographical area. This determined where one could eat, use the bathroom, get gasoline, rent a hotel room, or even get a drink of water. And there was always the threat of racist police encounters. These cultural experiences were a part of his mentoring on the road and influenced the evolution of his conscious intent to use music as a force for goodness. — Leonard Brown

Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want people to believe in God so they'll obey the law. That's the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short. — Carl Sagan

As Kate had told her Oma the night before, there was no society more viciously controlled by rumor than your local police force. — Karin Slaughter

Doing something, however pathetic, is psychologically better than doing nothing. In the current political environment - that is, with no more Cold War tensions - the tendency is to counteract the feelings of fear and vulnerability with a variety of military, paramilitary and police measures, despite the reality that this kind of excessive reliance on force in many ways intensifies the very problem it is purporting to solve. — Richard A. Falk

Holy fuck. What a buncha stupid white boys. Why don't they just invite the whole fucking police force into the bar? Avery this has gotta stop. Like now — H.M. Ward

We watch so many TV shows and movies about jaded or corrupt policemen, we forget people join the police force to do good, and they really care about that. — Enrico Colantoni

Hope you've been keeping your nose clean," DS Bradshaw said, trying to be jovial as he sipped a bottle of beer. I wondered what the police force would make of the fact that he was drinking alcohol at barely half past three in the afternoon. I would inform them at the first given opportunity, and also of his professional misconduct re Mum. — Matthew Crow

Despite your best efforts, you could not invent a better police force for literature than criticism and the author's own conscience. — Anton Chekhov

Criminal conduct by police officers, federal agents, and their confederates cannot be tolerated and will be met with the full force of the law. — Loretta Lynch

The American Left complains that we have no right to be the world's police force. On the contrary. We've been the world's janitor for almost a century, and after September 11, it became obvious it's better, safer, and more productive to change things instead of cleaning up after the mess. — Tammy Bruce

Some police forces would believe anything. Not the Metropolitan police, though. The Met was the hardest, most cynically pragmatic, most stubbornly down-to-earth police force in Britain. It would take a lot to faze a copper from the Met. It would take, for example, a huge, battered car that was nothing more nor less than a fireball, a blazing, roaring, twisted metal lemon from Hell, driven by a grinning lunatic in sunglasses, sitting amid the flames, trailing thick black smoke, coming straight at them through the lashing rain and wind at eighty miles an hour.
That would do it every time. — Terry Pratchett

The police are there to do the job, not to think about it,' was the line used by critics, the harshest of which were often other police. But police officers see and hear at first hand the things that ail a society, and along the way they gain trememdous insight into how to fix problems or processes, even if they can't change people's behaviours or attitudes. With the right systems and resources, their personal capacity for creating a safer society is far more powerful than the guns they carry. This would be the thinking driving my direction when I later came to Victoria to take charge of its police force. — Christine Nixon

The reactionaries are in possession of force, in not only the army and police, but in the press and the schools — John Dewey

It's certainly an interesting moment to try to talk about, 'cause you could make a great show about the police force right now, with all that's happening in the news and Ferguson and all of it. — Ethan Hawke

I've come to believe that what we need is a republic. People need to be run by people who like them, not boxed into a game they can't win by people who can't lose it. We need a head of state who's been on the run. An interior minister who's had the two o'clock knock and done solitary. A minister of agriculture who's seen a spade fired in anger and done twenty years on the land. A health minister who's had his life saved through swift transportation to a well-staffed, properly equipped hospital. An interior minister dedicated to dismantling the state with its futile bureaucratic waste and saving real money. And a police force that would put an end to the Bowmans of this world. — Derek Raymond

It's the Baker Street division of the detective police force ... There's more work to be got out of one of those little beggars than out of a dozen of the force,' Holmes remarked. 'The mere sight of an official-looking person seals men's lips. These youngsters, however, go everywhere and hear everything. They are as sharp as needles, too; all they want is organization. — Arthur Conan Doyle

She thought briefly of one police force in a neighboring state, some years back, which without a second thought had for many years classified people murdered in its jurisdiction as "male victim," "female victim," and "prostitute. — Diane Duane

When I'm walking around, I'm sometimes just perplexed at people who seem like everyday people, people who are on juries, who are in the police force, who are in control of my life in many ways. — Parul Sehgal

Christians don't steal or lie, they don't get divorced or have abortions. If the Ten Commandments were followed by everyone we would be able to fire half the police force and in six months the prisons would be all half empty. — John Hagee

I love you." Jack focused on her face, watching her pupils dilate in reaction to his words. "I love you and I'm staying here in Elliott. I'm quitting undercover work and maybe the police force altogether. We'll do whatever you want. Date me. Move in with me. Marry me. Make me beg. I don't care." He pressed a kiss against her mouth with a sigh. "Whatever you want. — Robin Covington

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

And, indeed, what is the State anyway but organized banditry? What is taxation but theft on a gigantic, unchecked, scale? What is war but mass murder on a scale impossible by private police forces? What is conscription but mass enslavement? Can anyone envision a private police force getting away with a tiny fraction of what States get away with, and do habitually, year after year, century after century? — Murray N. Rothbard

One more impression I gathered from that work of my boyhood, an impression which I did not formulate till afterward, and which will probably astonish many a reader. It is the spirit of equality which is highly developed in the Russian peasant, and in fact in the rural population everywhere. The Russian peasant is capable of much servile obedience to the landlord and the police officer; he will bend before their will in a servile manner; but he does not consider them superior men, and if the next moment that same landlord or officer talks to the same peasant about hay or ducks, the latter will reply to him as an equal to an equal. I never saw in a Russian peasant that servility, grown to be a second nature, with which a small functionary talks to one of high rank, or a valet to his master. The peasant too easily submits to force, but he does not worship it. — Pyotr Kropotkin

The military has been tremendously important in the past during catastrophes and in protecting the population. But it shouldn't become an auxiliary police force. — Otto Schily

Coercion is as much the tool of the welfare state as it is of communism. The programs and edicts of both are backed by the police force. All of us know this to be true under communism, but it is equally true under our own brand of welfare statism. — Leonard Read

So: Police are bureaucrats with weapons. If you think about it, this is a really ingenious trick. Because when most of think about police, we do not think of them as enforcing regulation. We think of them as fighting crime, and when we think of "crime," the kind of crime we have in our minds in violent crime. Even though, in fact, what police mostly do is exactly the opposite: they bring the threat of force to bear on situations that would otherwise have nothing to do with it. — David Graeber

The Fraud Police are the imaginary, terrifying force of 'real' grown-ups who you believe - at some subconscious level - are going to come knocking on your door in the middle of the night, saying:
We've been watching you, and we have evidence that you have NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING. You stand accused of the crime of completely winging it, you are guilty of making shit up as you go along, you do not actually deserve your job, we are taking everything away and we are TELLING EVERYBODY. — Amanda Palmer

The libertarian can have no truck with 'left' or 'right' because he regrets any form of authoritarianism - the use of police force to control the creative life of man. — Leonard Read

If the new military elite is anything like the old one, it would, in any great crisis, tend to side with the Old Order and defend the status quo, if necessary, by force. In the words of the standard police bulletin known to all radio listeners, These men are armed -and they may be dangerous. — Ferdinand Lundberg

And power is a game of smoke and mirrors,' said her ladyship, reaching for the wine. 'Oddly enough, Commander Vimes reminds me of that nearly every day. No civil police force could hold out against an irate and resolute population. The trick is not to let them realize that. Yes? — Terry Pratchett

POLICE, n. An armed force for protection and participation. — Ambrose Bierce

The American police are involved in psychological warfare against those Americans who don't frighten them with imposing papers and threats. It's a Victorian police force; it peers out of musty windows and wants to inquire about everything, and can make crimes if the crimes don't exist to its satisfaction. — Jack Kerouac

If reconciling your feminist values with your sexual preferences is something you're struggling with, don't panic. But try to believe what I'm about to tell you, because it's true: It's healthy to want and seek pleasure. It's generous and kind to want to make your sexual partner(s) feel good. You should do stuff with someone because you want to, not because they expect or feel entitled to it, and the same should be true for them. Whatever you do during sexytimes is between you and your partner - not you, your partner, and feminism, and not you, your partner, and the Gender Roles Police Force. Everything doesn't always have to be equal - unless you want it to be. The only things that matter are that everyone's having fun, and everyone's feeling respected by and respectful of their partners the whole time you're doing whatever it is that you get up to. Because in the end, that's all that sex is: Two people who want to have sex, alone in a room. No judgy voices allowed. — Krista Burton

The Marine Corps is the Navy's police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's. — Harry S. Truman

The Jedi Order was more than an unpaid police force, more than just an exercise club that was into metaphysics. It was a way of life, based on the Jedi Code - and a lot of rules for living that weren't in the Code, that had been tacked on later. One was that Jedi avoided becoming involved in romantic relationships. Once on the run, Kanan Jarrus had found that rule pretty easy to forget about. — John Jackson Miller

The fact is that the modern implementation of the prison planet has far surpassed even Orwell's 1984 and the only difference between our society and those fictionalized by Huxley, Orwell and others, is that the advertising techniques used to package the propaganda are a little more sophisticated on the surface.
Yet just a quick glance behind the curtain reveals that the age old tactics of manipulation of fear and manufactured consensus are still being used to force humanity into accepting the terms of its own imprisonment and in turn policing others within the prison without bars. — Paul Joseph Watson

What could be worse than dead? But all around him, the evidence was clear. Only weeks before, the NYPD had shot down a fifteen-year-old black boy, a student, for next to nothing. The shooting had started the riots, pitting young black men and some black women against the police force. The news made it sound like the fault lay with the blacks of Harlem. The violent, the crazy, the monstrous black people who had the gall to demand that their children not be gunned down in the streets. — Yaa Gyasi

Indiscriminate firing by police on people is absolute barbarism. Instead of solving their problems, the government is trying to suppress the people by force. — Sheikh Hasina

As a southerner born after the epic events of the civil rights movement, I've always wondered how on earth people of good will could have conceivably lived with Jim Crow - with the daily degradations, the lynchings in plain sight, and, as the movement gathered force, with the fire hoses and the police dogs and the billy clubs. — Jon Meacham

We need a strong police force - the Interior Ministry of the Republic of Chechnya. We have to get rid of the traitors who have managed to penetrate into the law-enforcement department. — Akhmad Kadyrov

The only institution in the Sicilian conscience that really counts is the family; counts, that is to say, more as a dramatic juridical contract or bond than as a natural association based on affection. The family is the Sicilians' State. The State, as it is for us, is extraneous to them, merely a de facto entity based on force; an entity imposing taxes, military service, war, police. Within the family institution the Sicilian can cross the frontier of his own natural tragic solitude and fit into a communal life where relationships are governed by hair-splitting contractual ties. To ask him to cross the frontier between family and State would be too much. In imagination he may be carried away by the idea of the State and may even rise to being Prime Minister; but the precise and definite code of his rights and duties will remain within the family, whence the step towards victorious solitude is shorter. — Leonardo Sciascia

The power to prevent violence is a power that no police force seems to have anywhere in the United States. — John Abizaid

A city suffering from chronic poverty, out-of-control crime, a $76 million budget deficit and a 15 percent unemployment rate (nearly 50 percent for Oakland's youth) can hardly afford such social justice follies. But a pushover Democratic mayor and an overwhelmed police force have left what's left of gainfully employed Oakland taxpayers at the mercy of professional freeloaders and anti-capitalism saboteurs. — Michelle Malkin

The
experience he'd gained during his years in the police force
had given him this unambiguous answer: there are no
murderers. Only ordinary people who commit murder — Henning Mankell

My two sisters were always cooking. I wanted to be in the police force, but I didn't get in because I just so happened to procrastinate a bit, and I hadn't gotten my application in at the right time. — April Bloomfield

I want you back here now. I want you next to me now. I cannot believe that my family, your brother, all our friends, and an entire police force can't keep tabs on one twenty-six year old graphic designer who thinks he's fuckin' Batman.
Detective Sam Kage in A Matter Of Time (vol 2 or part 4) — Mary Calmes

I have very good friends who are in the army and also friends within the police force. When I say friends, people who love my music and who actually love the messages within my music. — Thomas Mapfumo

It used to be that a fellow went on the police force when everything else failed, but today he goes in the advertising game. — Kin Hubbard

Smiley himself was one of those solitaires who seem to have come into the world fully educated at the age of eighteen. Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colourful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country's enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim, he learns to love the crowds who pass him in the street without a glance; he clings to them for his anonimity and his safety. His fear makes him servile - he could embrace the shoppers who jostle him in their impatience, and force him from the pavement. He could adore the officials, the police, the bus conductors, for the terse indifference of their attitudes. (ch. 9) — John Le Carre

In the police force, two, three, five traitors are detected who are really working for someone else. When we cleanse the police of them, the problem will be simplified a lot. Terrorists will have no one to contact - they will be left without informers. — Akhmad Kadyrov

There's been a lot of talk about body cameras as a silver bullet or a solution. I think the task force concluded that there is a role for technology to play in building additional trust and accountability, but it's not a panacea, it has to be embedded in a broader change in culture and a legal framework that ensures that people's privacy is respected and that not only police officers but the community themselves feel comfortable with how technologies are being used. — Barack Obama

I think the purpose of government is for a population to accomplish its mutually agreed-upon goals without every citizen having to accomplish those goals for him- or herself. Some examples: we have a police force so we don't need to have vigilante mobs. We have a post office so we don't need to deliver our own mail across the entire nation. We have a fire department so we don't have to put out our own fires.
In return for the services we agree on, we pay a fee.
We just don't all agree on what the services and what the fees should be.
I personally think it's sad we don't all agree on single-payer health care. We agree on paying taxes to save a house from fire but not a body from cancer? Why do we care more about our property than about ourselves? — Robert Peate

The line between "police force" and "army" is narrow under the best of circumstances. — Mira Grant

It's virtually an axiom that teamwork across divisions of a ministry or police force is complicated by rivalries, turf battles, and competing personal and institutional interests. — Moises Naim

In the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrong doing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power. — Theodore Roosevelt

I will lead you to the City Hall, clean out the police force, hang the Prosecuting Attorney, burn every book that has a particle of law in it, then enact new laws for the workingmen. — Denis Kearney

You're not going to have the police force representing the black and brown community, if they've spent the last 30 years busting every son and daughter and father and mother for every piddling drug offense that they've ever done, thus creating a mistrust in the community. But at the same time, you should be able to talk about abuses of power, and you should be able to talk about police brutality and what, in some cases, is as far as I'm concerned, outright murder and outright loss of justice without the police organization targeting you in the way that they have done me. — Quentin Tarantino

They seemed more like machines than humans, and, let's face it, they are a civilian's army. An army whose soldiers dressed in costumes and walked and talked like robots, with guns strapped to their waist belts, always looking for an enemy. — Kenneth Eade

We have a right to expect a police force that protects our citizens and behaves in a responsible manner ... in the American conscience there is no room for bigotry and racism. — George H. W. Bush

All this talk: the state should do this or that, ultimately means: the police should force consumers to behave otherwise than they would behave spontaneously. — Ludwig Von Mises

A police force, wherever they are, is made up of amazing people, and I respect them a great deal. — Nancy McKeon

We still have time to back out, I guess, if we want to. I don't see the karmic police coming to take us into existential custody, y'know? — David Berger

In New York City we have the biggest police force in the country. We have 35,000 uniformed officers. We're able to mass officers in significant numbers if we had to. — Raymond Kelly

The right way is the greatest gratifier of human wishes ever come upon - when allowed to operate. It is as morally sound as the Golden Rule. It is the way of willing exchange, of common consent, of self-responsibility, of open opportunity. It respects the right of each to the product of his labor. It limits the police force to keeping the peace. It is the way of the free market, private property, limited government. On its banner is emblazoned Individual Liberty. — Leonard Read

D'you ever wonder what it would be like if our positions were reversed?' I ask. At Jack's puzzled look I continue. 'If we whites were in charge instead of you Crosses?'
'Can't say it's ever crossed my mind,' Jack shrugs.
'I used to think about it a lot,' I sigh. 'Dreams of living in a world with no more discrimination, no more prejudice, a fair police force, an equal justice system, equality of education, equality of life, a level playing field ... — Malorie Blackman

Not even the most heavily-armed police state can exert brute force to all of its citizens all of the time. Meme management is so much subtler; the rose-tinted refraction of perceived reality, the contagious fear of threatening alternatives. — Peter Watts

When you look at the Justice Department's report talking about the Ferguson Police Department's rampant pattern of discrimination and its excessive use of force against African-American citizens, it's hard to try to rationalize how this cesspool of racism doesn't spill over onto the individual officers. — Benjamin Crump

The state is a human institution, not a superhuman being. He who says "state" means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of the government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like. He who says: This law should be better enforced, means: The police should force people to obey this law. He who says: The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. The worship of the state is the worship of force. — Ludwig Von Mises

Under the constitution, there was never meant to be a federal police force. Even an FBI limited only to investigations was not accepted until this century. Yet today, fueled by the federal government's misdirected war on drugs, radical environmentalism, and the aggressive behavior of the nanny state, we have witnessed the massive buildup of a virtual army of armed regulators prowling the States where they have no legal authority. The sacrifice of individual responsibility and the concept of local government by the majority of American citizens has permitted the army of bureaucrats to thrive. — Ron Paul

Law enforcement officers should use only the minimum force necessary in dealing with disorders when they arise. A human life-the life of a student, soldier, or police officer-is a precious thing, and the taking of a life can be justified only as a necessary and last resort. — Richard M. Nixon

Communist leaders ask humanity to endure the conflagration of revolutionary violence, the suppression and liquidation of resistance groups, the expropriation of property, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat which they themselves describe as "based on force and unrestricted by any laws," the suspension of all civil liberties - suppression of free press, free speech and assembly, the existence of slave labor camps, the constant observation of all citizens by secret police, the long periods of service — W. Cleon Skousen

The back door blew out from the limo, winging across the road at such a force that it ripped right through a Luxen in a police uniform. Like, one Luxen suddenly became two not-so-put-together Luxen. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

A militarized police force facing down innocent protesters with sniper rifles and machine guns is totally unacceptable in America. — William Lacy Clay Jr.

The New World Order is a world that has a supernational authority to regulate world commerce and industry; an international organization that would control the production and consumption of oil; an international currency that would replace the dollar; a World Development Fund that would make funds available to free and Communist nations alike; and an international police force to enforce the edicts of the New World Order. — Willy Brandt

Let's dig deep to build the kind of police force that our fatherland really deserves. We need a revolution of the police force here in Venezuela, and I will carry it out without delay, without excuses. — Nicolas Maduro

The government's only functions are to protect the rights of the individual; therefore, you need a police force and an army. — Neil Peart

Every year, without fail, we outlaw more things, catch more people doing them, and put more of them in jail. The outlawed behavior never goes away, because, directly or indirectly, it's supported by the strong, invisible, unrelenting force called vision. This explains why police officers are much more likely to take up crime than criminals are to take up law enforcement. It's called 'going with the flow. — Daniel Quinn

The police force were outstanding in their field. But all they did was stand in their field. They kept passengers on board while they played with a suspect package for two and three quarter hours. Extraordinary. — Michael O'Leary

Passion, once unleashed, has a way of unleashing other passions
a principle adhered to as firmly by the police force of any large modern city as by the Greek tragedians. — Caroline Gordon

When a legislature decides to steal some of our rights and plans to use police force to accomplish it, what's the real difference between them and the thief? Darn little! They hide behind the excuse that they're legislating democratically. The fact they do it by a majority vote has no moral significance whatsoever. Numerical might does not constitute right, no more than a lynch mob can justify its act because a majority participated. — H. L. Richardson

Public convenience or dignity means nothing; police prerogatives assume the status of divine law. Submissiveness is demanded. If a police officer kills a civilian, it is a regrettable circumstance: the officer was possibly over-zealous. If a civilian kills a police officer all hell breaks loose. The police foam at the mouth. All other business comes to a standstill until the perpetrator of this most dastardly act is found out. Inevitably, when apprehended, he is beaten or otherwise tortured for his intolerable presumption ... The police complain that they cannot function efficiently, that criminals escape them. Better a hundred unchecked criminals than the despotism of one unbridled police force. — Jack Vance

I intend to introduce legislation that will make police accountable for their actions and limit uses of force in cases where it is unnecessary. — Bernie Sanders

Nothing, indeed, could be more unlike the tone of the [Patristic] Fathers, than the cold, passionless, and prudential theology of the eighteenth century; a theology which regarded Christianity as an admirable auxiliary to the police force, and a principle of decorum and of cohesion in society, but which carefully banished from it all enthusiasm, veiled or attenuated all its mysteries, and virtually reduced it to an authoritative system of moral philosophy. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

When I was in my teenage years, I went to sign up as a cadet entrant to the police force but was at the very last moment rejected, just as I was about to sign my name on the dotted line. I won't get into why that happened, but it was a moment where it could've been predetermined then that I was off to become a policeman. — Ian Anderson

There's more private security in the United States than there are publicly funded forces, like police. What you don't want is a meld of government and commerce - you really want to keep those two things separate - because once you have that meld, you've got megacorruption, and you have no third force to whom you can say this stuff is poisoning our kids. — Margaret Atwood

What was to be a relatively innocuous federal government, operating from a defined enumeration of specific grants of power, has become an ever-present and unaccountable force. It is the nation's largest creditor, debtor, lender, employer, consumer, contractor, grantor, property owner, tenant, insurer, health-care provider, and pension guarantor. Moreover, with aggrandized police powers, what it does not control directly it bans or mandates by regulation. — Mark R. Levin