I had proposed to HBO a series about the city cops in Rome at the time of Nero. What had interested me was the idea of order without law. The Praetorian Guard, who were the emperor’s guards, understood how they were to proceed. But for the city cops, who were called the Urban Cohorts, there was no law at all.
The only thing police patrol cops – in certain situations – are expert at is spotting anomalies. When you are a black person that is driving in a place that you stick out, that’s all they’re going to see.
In the middle of the night, when you’re ambiguously ethnic, like me, when you’re brown, beige, mauve, siena, one of those lighter browns in the Crayola box. You have to be careful of the cops and robbers, because nobody’s quite sure what you are, but everybody has assumptions.
There is a genocide that is taking place among black men, in particular young black men, but it is not a genocide being perpetuated by white cops, by the Nazis, or by the Klan. Unfortunately and tragically, it is being perpetuated by other young black men.
Growing up, you always heard of cops beating people up behind buildings and letting them go. Now they just shoot them.
I’ve had negative experiences with cops. I’ve had positive experiences with cops.
I definitely support cop acting more than cops, but all of them ain’t bad, just some of them.
There’s a certain kind of guy, a certain kind of humor, that goes with Irish cops and firemen.
There was a whole slew of ‘Cops and Robbersons,’ just films that didn’t measure up, that didn’t stand for anything comedically. They were purely for a paycheck.
When I was in the U.S., I was caught by the cops for speeding and charged a fine of 200 dollars. I didn’t have so much money then – I was still a student – but I certainly didn’t want to spend a night behind bars. I called a few of my friends frantically and they bailed me out of the situation.
I played cops and robbers and pirates and all the rest when I was a kid, but I didn’t want to grow up and be an actor and play cops and robbers and pirates. I wanted to grow up and be that, be cops and robbers and pirates.
We need the cops, especially in the black community.
New York cops are very specific in terms of the way they talk and the way they handle themselves.
The BET definition of a humanitarian is someone who perpetuates a war on cops.
It was hard knowing that you walk into a store sometimes, and you’re wearing a baseball cap and a hoodie and some baggy jeans, or your skin is a little darker, and the clerk is just staring at you a little bit harder. The cops treat you a little differently.
Sometimes I’ll be somewhere, and the cops will show up to kick me out and end up just asking for a photo.
It is a different genre – a show about something other than doctors, lawyers and cops. Teachers are something completely different. I think it makes for very interesting television.
Local prosecutors work alongside local police officers on a regular basis and are therefore conflicted when it comes to prosecuting those same officers. They are under extreme pressure from local police unions and from rank-and-file cops.
I grew up in the hood, and I was raised to hate cops. But then, I started to realize that they’re people, and they have lives, too.
Initially charged with assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest I was held for 36 hours, was beaten by cops and made to stand spread eagled against the cell wall for 12 hours with no food or water, until I collapsed. Everyone was strip searched on the way in.
I have no hatred for cops. I have hatred for racists and brutal people, but not necessarily the cops. The cops are just doing what they’re told to do.
I was raised on Long Island. There were a lot of cops and firefighters who lived there.
Every time I hear about a new show, and I see a show that is being created that is nothing like I’ve ever thought about, I just get so excited about that expansion. Because I started working when ‘L.A. Law’ was on. It was lawyers and cops.
Cops can deprive people of their freedom. They are sworn to serve and protect. They work for us and they belong to, basically, a service industry, laboring in conditions that are sometimes threatening, often dangerous yet interesting.
So many people wanted an adventure. It was really more about finding the cast that I wanted for ‘Expedition Impossible,’ so it had good diversity, and people could really say, ‘Oh, there’s the firefighters, there’s the team of cops, there’s the grandpa’ – so that you can really relate with them.
I understand what’s going on in this world. But cops have to go home at the end of the day. They have a family. They have to go home, too.
It seemed to me… that the only valid people to deal with crime were cops, and I would like to make the lead character, rather than a single person, a squad of cops.
What firefighters and people in our military and cops do is separate from what the rest of us do; basically these people say, ‘I’m going to protect all these strangers.’
We don’t take care of our teachers and our cops and our firemen. They should be at the top of our list.
Cops are everywhere in New York City. Cars drive by every few minutes. Uniforms stand nonchalantly at street corners.
I get it, cops deal with a lot, but at the same time, we crave justice, and we do want to believe things are going to be all right.
‘Reno’ was originally going to be a sketch show, with the cops as a transitional element.
Growing up where I’m from, some people are afraid of cops. They don’t really like cops. And what a lot of people don’t realize is, they’re really not the bad guys. They’re really on our side, they’re really trying to help us out. And sometimes, we don’t understand that.
I feel for the cops; I feel for us as a society as a whole, period.
People are used to watching cop shows in which the cops are very straight down the line and they solve the crimes, but I think people actually have a much more sophisticated and varied view of the police.
It seems that the only gun violence some leftists approve of is gun violence aimed at cops and other groups they see as oppressive or racist.
Cops are doing crazy things now, and they catching theyselves; bodycams, carcams. But until they really start giving these cops time – 50 years, 100 years – it’s not gonna stop. As long as they keep getting off, nothing’s gonna happen. It’s been going on since before N.W.A.
Where typically the cops are generally the good guys, ‘The Red Road’ blurs the lines intelligently and shows corruption from all sides of the law. It provides unpredictable drama where the audience is kept guessing about how these characters will each choose to act.
As liberals in charge and a media question the capabilities of police, they then limply ask why there is an anti-police atmosphere or why cops are holding back.
I’ve had times where one of my roommates was moving out of the house in college, and because we were the only black people in that neighborhood, the cops got called, and we had guns drawn on us. Came in the house, without knocking, guns drawn on my teammates and roommates. So I have experienced this.
You have a couple of buddies sleep over, and, you know, you play cops and robbers. That I’m getting paid to do it now is kind of funny.
I’ll be honest with you: I think that it’s really difficult, this framing around ‘good cops’ and ‘bad cops.’ Policing, as a system, is incredibly corrupt, period.
It’s the demand of all demands to do a car chase that’s unique because there are so many… really since the beginning of film, even in the silent era, ‘The Keystone Cops.’
I’m not the kind of guy a girl would take home to her mother. She’d kick the girl out and probably call the cops on me.
I think the more we see more officers holding each other accountable, the more we will see people trust cops in this country.
More cops on our streets and in our neighborhoods mean safer streets and neighborhoods.
Our TV and movie cops are usually in heels and pencil skirts.
I think our ‘Reno’ cops are, basically, if you made us make fun of ourselves at a party. That is what we would do. We would do those characters and not really think about it. We didn’t develop the characters; everyone just put on a name tag and started improvising.
My friends and I make short films. We pretended to rob the Dairy Queen where our friend worked, but someone thought we were real thieves and called the cops! Soon, the cops burst in with guns drawn!
Cops on the beat can stop problems before the damage spreads.
If you get a call to go to a certain place in the middle of the night to pick up stolen goods, and it turns out the stolen goods don’t show up but the cops show up, I think you’re going to have a very weak story saying, ‘Well, I got swindled here.’
I’ll tell you one big misconception. Cops never say ‘Freeze!’ It might be misinterpreted. They might think you were, like, ordering fries. Or that you had fleas.
It’s a great feeling to know that 100 cops want to stop you doing something and they can’t.
I don’t want the books to become PR exercises for the police; I want to have the freedom to write about cops who cross the line: bad cops.
Motown was about music for all people – white and black, blue and green, cops and the robbers. I was reluctant to have our music alienate anyone.
