William Lacy Clay Jr. Quotes

To indiscriminately cast all law enforcement as enemies of our communities is to engage in an attempt to divide our nation by turning Americans against each other.

Despite claims that there are good and bad cops, we know that the system is failing everyone - including the police.

I definitely support cop acting more than cops, but all of them ain't bad, just some of them.

We need to work for a day when police shootings are rare and not the stuff of our daily news.

There is not one single police officer in America that I am not afraid of and not one that I would trust to tell the truth or obey the laws they are sworn to uphold. I do not believe they protect me in any way.

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

I think the only thing that's really going to make a change in terms of how we feel as citizens in terms of safety and our relationship with the police is if we start seeing more federal indictments, arrests, and convictions of police officers.

A recent police study found that you're much more likely to get shot by a fat cop if you run.

We're not anti-police... we're anti-police brutality.

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.

It's an issue that we need to have a national discussion about, the militarization of local police forces, and then when they are used to quell peaceful demonstration. Then we have a problem, and especially around this entire case of the murder of Michael Brown at the hands of a Ferguson police officer.

If you're riding down somewhere, and a cop stops you and starts to put you under arrest, even though you haven't committed any crime, go to jail. Mississippi is not the place to start conducting constitutional law classes for the policemen, many of whom don't have a fifth-grade education.

There are 18,000 different police forces in the United States and sometimes something wrong happens.

We need the cops, especially in the black community.

I have a problem with the way the media deals with a lot of law enforcement issues.

In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn't be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.

I know a lot of police officers who are on the force to do the right thing to protect people. But how can you deny this pattern, this disturbing pattern, Alton Sterling, Mr. Castile in my own community, Philando Castile, but then Tamir Rice, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland?

The only people who distrust the cops are crooks. They're not out there just harassing innocent people. Maybe sometimes they do. But there's no inherent situation where cops are deliberately out there harassing people.

An abusive cop does not equal a bigoted police department.

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.

There is nothing just or fair about what happened to Jordan Edwards. And his story is yet another in a long line of tragedies that now powerfully remind us of the long way we still have to go in creating a fair and just relationship between law enforcement, our criminal justice system, and the public our laws are supposed to protect.

There's good cops and bad cops, and the good cops have to hold the bad cops accountable. We have to hold the bad cops accountable, too.

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.

We just were saying no more police brutality. And we had enough of police harassment in the Village and other places.

The worst teacher in America could never do as much damage as the worst police officer in America. But the right wing has never even been slightly curious about evaluating the job performance of police officers.