Top 66 Policing Quotes

My policing was nothing but activism – it had to be.

I’m really looking for an agenda that looks at safety for our communities beyond policing.

Violent crime rates fell steadily from 1993 to 2002, and this nearly coincides with the establishment of the community policing program known as the COPS program under the Clinton administration.

Because of my struggles and my work, I have the unique ability to be a bridge between the NYPD and our communities, restoring confidence and accountability in policing that is essential to our recovery.

Through Black Lives Matter and social media, we’ve been able to have a really challenging discussion with America about police and how much it is investing in policing.

The use of water cannon could have changed the face of British policing; it would have made a huge difference to British policing.

Strategies that do show evidence of effectiveness include policing that’s focused on high-risk individuals or geographic areas, and/or deterrence-based approaches that hold entire gangs accountable should individual members engage in criminal behavior.

The power of community policing is in the relationship. This can happen only if an officer sticks around for a while.

We need to hire more black police officers in this country because these are good jobs, and African Americans should have their fair share of good jobs. But we shouldn’t do it because we think that’s going to change policing. We have to push for police reform in other ways.

Twenty-first century policing reform will require increased investment in law enforcement, not defunding it.

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

Without a beat officer system, there can be no crime prevention or supportive investigation. This is the very foundation of sound policing. It is the beat officer who connects with the common man on a daily basis and is the five senses of his area.

The act of policing is, in order to punish less often, to punish more severely.

We are not a country that subscribes to policing any part of the world. The areas we are comfortable with are capacity building, intelligence sharing, exchange of ships, call on each other’s ports, joint training and exercises.

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.

What I have seen in my travels across this country is the dedication, the commitment, and the resolve of our brave men and women in law enforcement to improving policing, to embracing the 21st Century Task Force recommendations, and to continuing to have a dialogue that makes our country safer for all.

What I’m really praying is that we, as a people, understand that we are interdependent upon each other. We don’t want police to leave; we want policing in our world. But I think that people aren’t comfortable with each other.

In the 1990s, we introduced Boston’s community policing strategy. We reversed the tide of violent crime that threatened our city, and we established a national model for preventing and fighting crime.

During the debates for mayor, I was continually pressed on my position on the policing procedure known as ‘stop and frisk’ – which is actually in law enforcement known as ‘stop, question and frisk’ – and why I believed that, if used properly, it could reduce crime without infringing on personal liberties and human rights.

Policing was developed, created, and implemented for the elite, and – in the case of the United States – the elites were and almost entirely remain white, upper middle class, cisgender straight men.

Women deal with real issues with policing that don’t really get talked about.

What was most important, for me, is that I could share what I experience as a young person – in particular, what impact incarceration and policing had on my life and my family’s life.

Reactive and proactive policing are both necessary. Still, we need to lower expectations that such efforts can ever be responsive to crime.

The Justice in Policing Act would enact comprehensive reforms to law enforcement that would improve police training and practices, while increasing much-needed transparency and accountability.

The horrific cases in Ferguson, in Staten Island with the death of Eric Garner, and all across the country serve as stark reminders that we must have a say in who polices us, and how that policing is done. We must, we must, let our voices be heard on Election Day.

When police or security personnel work in schools, they should follow the community policing model that integrates officers into school life, not just involve them when trouble arises.

The overall policing budget is protected.

Policing language and even legislating against certain behaviours will only go so far to address the pervasive problem of racial bias. To get at the root cause we must have open, honest and sometimes painful conversations.

The Republican base – the Evangelical get-out-the-vote troops – are going to be devastated when they discover how many closeted gay Republicans were involved in policing Mark Foley in the House of Representatives.

I’m interested in Scotland now and then, how it’s changed. I want to get the reader to think about that by thinking about something from the past. How has society changed, how has policing changed, have we changed philosophically, psychologically, culturally, spiritually?

Looking back to when I joined, some areas of policing were barred for women. So you couldn’t do full public order training, you couldn’t carry a firearm as a woman in the Met until 1988, there were no women dog handlers, and there was probably one woman in CID.

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.

By incentivizing Wall Street players to sniff out inefficient or corrupt companies and bet against them, short-selling acts as a sort of policing system; legal short-sellers have been instrumental in helping expose firms like Enron and WorldCom.

Quality-of-life policing is based on probable cause – an officer has witnessed a crime personally or has a witness to the crime.

It’s not for me to challenge operational policing based on one story in the media.

There’s more we can do as a community to try to change what policing looks like in our cities.

‘Moral police’ is my new word. I am very against the media doing moral policing, giving opinions on actor’s lives. Media should not become moral police; they should just report.

Without the U.K. contribution to policing and anti-terrorism, the whole of Europe would be less safe.

Policing of the disabled and how many deaf people get shot by cops is sort of insane. And it’s not talked about.

Teaching is a truly noble profession. It’s sad the amount of responsibility that teachers have today. They’re not only teaching kids: they’re raising kids, policing kids – and they don’t make a lot of money.

Of course, when people work together, there can be tension and disagreement. But policing informal behavior makes it hard for people to speak freely for fear they will say the wrong thing. Even self-aware individuals can doubt their judgement and start to rely on the diversity trainer to judge if something is offensive.

When Colin Kaepernick first took a knee, he took it, and he identified police brutality, aggressive policing techniques, he broadened it to things like oppression to inequality.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

More draconian forms of policing and punishment are no guarantee of a reduction in violent crime.

As I came to the lime light, the media asked me many questions. A lot many moral policing… ‘Wear this, wear that, why a T-shirt?’ Everybody has the right to form their opinions, and I have the right to ignore them.

If you’re not thinking about the way systemic bias can be propagated through the criminal justice system or predictive policing, then it’s very likely that, if you’re designing a system based on historical data, you’re going to be perpetuating those biases.

I will never take a day off policing the people we pay and keep a public trust with. I will use my camera, my pen, my pad, and my network to do my part, to make sure that Americans will no longer fear their government. Or its employees. They work for us – not the other way around.

American history and the black experience are inextricable. And both are inextricable from policing. Far more often than not, that’s been a good thing.

Everybody has a stake in the story of policing.

As an early advocate for neighborhood policing, I’ve been heartened to see the tangible impact of police officers spending less time in their station houses and more time on our street corners, developing collaborative relationships with residents and businesses that help us fight and deter crime.