Don Edwards Quotes

Stop and frisk - whether done while walking down the street or while driving a car - is a civil rights violation.

We should limit qualified immunity and change the standard for bringing cases against officers who violate victims' civil and Constitutional rights.

The tactics that the Trump administration are using on the streets of Portland are abhorrent. People are being literally scooped off the street into unmarked vans, rental cars, apparently. They are being denied probable cause. And they are denied due process. They don't even know who's pulling them into the vans.

When a young non-white male is stopped and searched at the whim of a police officer, his idea of personal space, privacy and self esteem are shattered, to say nothing of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment protections. The damage goes deep quickly and stays. Stop & frisk, as well as a tactic, is also an incitement.

The full resources of the Department of Justice have been committed to the investigation into Michael Brown's death.

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

There's nothing wrong with this country that we couldn't cure by turning it over to the police for a couple of weeks.

Without the burden on the police to adhere to the requirements of the 4th Amendment, you loose the dogs.

It is not only under Nazi rule that police excesses are inimical to freedom. It is easy to make light of insistence on scrupulous regard for the safeguards of civil liberties when invoked on behalf of the unworthy. It is too easy. History bears testimony that by such disregard are the rights of liberty extinguished, heedlessly at first, then stealthily, and brazenly in the end.

Nearly every day on the television set the hero cop breaks into the bad guy’s house and beats a confession out of him and we cheer on the cop. Propaganda smears our clear vision. It causes us to accept the diminishment of our constitutional protections as something to be lauded — after all, the cop was protecting us.

The 4th Amendment has been a wall between a free society and overzealous police action.

The U.S. Supreme Court has eviscerated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, giving the police license to sweep communities, to conduct 'stop and frisk' operations.

If a police officer is looking for a criminal, he or she might stop a number of people in that particular area and ask to see their driver's license. No one bellyaches about civil rights or privacy issues. We're just happy the cops are trying to find the bad guy.

When law enforcement violates departmental policies or operates outside of its certified training, it should not be insulated from liability to the victims of these breaches.

The police have the right to prosecute people, but not use violence.

If you feel your rights are being abused by the authorities, and you don't say something, sometimes the cops don't know how far to take it. They have a hard job, but at the same time, I think it's just about educating yourself.

Our policemen and women are disrespected. We need law and order, but we need justice, too.

Every American expects and deserves the protection of law enforcement that is effective, responsive, respectful and, most importantly, constitutional.

Stop-and-frisk is not something that you can stop. It is an absolutely basic tool of American policing. It would be like asking a doctor to give an examination to you without using his stethoscope.

The black community has always complained about abuse from cops. It's nothing new. But now, more people are seeing visual examples of what they've been complaining about. That's one thing that has changed over time.

Satisfying a profit motive must never be the reason for law enforcement, and it certainly must never be allowed to support the seizure of personal property by those who we trust to protect and defend our nation and our Constitution.

I don't have a problem with stepped-up surveillance as long as we follow the rule of law.

When officers' actions violate their duty, justice should be served in accordance with our legal system.

It should go without saying that regular citizens have no authority to arrest or detain anyone.

This is the problem with the United States: there's no leadership. A leader would say, 'Police brutality is an oxymoron. There are no brutal police. The minute you become brutal you're no longer police.' So, what, we're not dealing with police. We're dealing with a federally authorized gang.