Rodney King Quotes

There's a lot of things that need to change. One specifically? Police brutality.

I actually see a lot of the pain and destruction, like Black Lives Matter, in the long-term as positive because it shows that we're moving forward; we're evolving and moving and challenging the frontiers.

We run into police brutality often and it's always a problem that we always have to protest and speak out.

When you say you want to talk about racial justice, that's not the same as I want to do something about racial justice. Saying I want to hold police accountable is doing something. Saying that I want to take money out of politics, big money, is doing something.

Laquan McDonald is a wake-up call to all of us. It's a reminder there's a lot broken.

I feel like I've built big enough platform and still building my platform for us to get justice for Breonna Taylor.

We need to hold accountable anyone who has misused power, and put that power to work for the common good. That includes, but goes beyond, police reform.

Over and over again, I looked family members who had lost loved ones to police violence, I looked them right in the eye and told them, 'Don't worry. We will get justice for your family.'

I became personal friends with Erica Garner and with so many other families affected by police violence.

If you're quiet, knowing that there's a culture of racism inside most police departments, and you're not saying anything, you are on the wrong side of history.

Tamir Rice, Tanisha Anderson, Mya Hall, Walter Scott, Sandra Bland - these names are important. They're inherently important, and the space that #BlackLivesMatter held and continues to hold helped propel the conversation around the state-sanctioned violence they experienced.

Many are observing Ferguson and witnessing the anger, demonstrations, looting and vandalism and calling for quiet. But quiet isn't enough. The absence of noise isn't the presence of justice - and we must demand justice in Ferguson and the other 'Fergusons' around America.

Justice must be done in investigating the tragic death of Mr. Freddie Gray. His family deserves our deepest sympathy and respect for their loss, and our admiration for their courage in calling us, as a city, to act as our better selves.

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

I'm confident that the commitment of the co-chairs of the Ferguson Commission - along with the work of other local leaders and the Missouri General Assembly - will have a very positive impact as this community works to move forward.

Calling for police reform is not calling for police retribution.

I think that the dialogue between police officers and the black community has to get better, but not better in a way where, 'Oh, let's talk about it when something horrible happens.' The dialogue has to be going on consistently, every day.

Black Lives Matter has already demonstrated that it has the power to shift the societal landscape by bringing awareness to age-old issues that have plagued us as a people.

What we're dealing with is institutional, and unless systems are put into place that will ensure accountability, we can expect racially biased police practices to continue.

I think we need to rethink our ideas about what policing is and should be. I think we need to rethink our ideas about the criminal justice system as a whole, including the hysterically named corrections system. I mean, what's being corrected? Look, none of it's working.

Shaming is powerful and useful. I'm living in New York, and my instinct is that, after the Black Lives Matter protests, which were organized on social media, the chance of there being another Eric Garner, choked to death in New York by an NYPD officer, has diminished.

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.

With so much racial tension and issues between the police and black and minority ethnic groups, there needs to be more in-depth conversations if we're going to fix anything.

Local prosecutors must use the power and discretion afforded them to carry out sweeping reforms that will protect the public - especially Black communities - from police violence. Our system's integrity depends on it.

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.