Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

The police should be addressing car break-ins and burglaries and things like that. And increasingly what they're doing is providing social services. The majority of police are not trained in the provision of social services.

We hoped against hope that what we had been doing was enough to prevent a riot. It was not enough.

I mean that the function of the police is to solve problems that have law-enforcement consequences in a way that is based on a genuine partnership with the neighborhood in both the venting of the problem and the discussion of the solution.

It's basically taking a 911 call, bringing them on stage and dealing with it just like when I was a Chicago policeman for 12 years. I personally become involved. Where Jerry lets people tell their story and lets everything happen on stage, I kind of go after the bad guy and protect the little guy.

What police do is not really about force. Police preserve peace and order principally by educating, leading, persuading people to cooperate in a peaceful community. Any veteran officer will tell you that the essential police skill is talking to people. That is especially true for dealing with young people, who ... no one else really talks to at all.

Having the support of our communities is absolutely essential to productive and sustainable crime prevention efforts. While there are law enforcement agencies that have meaningful and transparent relationships with all segments of their communities, it is fair to say that there are other agencies that need to further enhance relationships and build trust within their communities, particularly among disenfranchised segments.

You cannot police a community without effectively working with the community.

I want to foster a positive relationship between police officers and the communities they protect.

It is the police of America who are on the front lines, who are on the streets, who are in the daily contact with American citizens, who translate the dreams of American citizens when they succeed and frustrate the dreams when they fail.

There is a legitimate role for the police to keep the peace, but there should be a difference between a police response and a military response.

The police should be focused on policing criminal activity, and that's sort of the beginning, the middle and the end of it for me.

True public safety requires a collaboration between law enforcement and the community.

I will not allow continued planned street violence between rival factions to take place on the streets of Portland.

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 thank the officers of the Minneapolis Police Department, who work hard every day to help people in their most vulnerable moments, keep our communities safe, and build relationships and trust with the public.

I try to bridge the gap between police and local communities.

Cops should not be separate from the black community or any community. Their salaries are paid for by the communities they police. They should be working for the communities they police. But as we saw in Ferguson, Missouri, they are not always doing that.

There are some situations where the police need to have adequate resources on hand in order to be able to go into a situation safely. Their job is to enforce the law, not be martyrs.

Mental health is one of the biggest concerns, because now police are having to handle a lot of really difficult mental health problems on the street.

We talked about the resources that the justice department has available to help them -- the technical assistance to ensure that we're diffusing situations, not encouraging them to spiral out of control.

The biggest qualification to be a good police officer is to have a high degree of emotional intelligence.

We need better police training.

At a time when we must seek to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the local community, I am deeply concerned that the deployment of military equipment and vehicles sends a conflicting message.

I wouldn't call it "police reform," but I would say that police procedure enhancement could be helpful - these police shootings are absolutely horrible.

We need to support our police officers and make sure that community policing becomes something that becomes the standard across the country.