Steve Harvey Quotes

When it comes to police officers, I have concerns about the training that they receive. This whole notion of implicit bias, looking at people and having stereotypical reactions to them on the basis of their ethnicity.

As a black man, you run from the cops. It's different now, but back when I was coming up, you run.

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

When parents tell their children not to congregate on corners, especially in groups, out of fear for them encountering the police, what does that say? We have a trust problem.

The grand jury system - not just in Ferguson, but nationwide - needs a hard look. Millions feel that officers who are trigger-happy are handed a license to shoot - based not on facts, but on stereotypes the officers carry.

Freddie Gray was a story I followed closer than others, for whatever reason, in this larger narrative of police brutality.

I think the majority of police are really good people and really good at their jobs, but that doesn't change the fact that with any interaction I have with them, I'm viewed as a potential threat.

There is no such thing as a bad cop, only disturbing and dominant cop thinking that will invariably lead to excessive force and tragic outcomes.

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?

There has been an outpouring of anger and concern because of the actions of George Zimmerman, a private citizen who profiled a young boy and pursued him and tried to confront him, perhaps. But what George Zimmerman did is no different than what police officers do every day as a matter of standard operating procedure.

I've had times where one of my roommates was moving out of the house in college, and because we were the only black people in that neighborhood, the cops got called, and we had guns drawn on us. Came in the house, without knocking, guns drawn on my teammates and roommates. So I have experienced this.

I was eight years old when I got the talk about what to do if a police officer stops me. I was 15 when I was face-down on the curb for the first time.

Communities of color have also had to watch video after video of unarmed black men and women being handled without regard for their lives or well-being. As a black man, I see these images, and I see myself; I wonder whether this will happen to me or one of my loved ones.

I know what it means to be stopped by police. I've been stopped by police a lot.

The problem is not cop killers...it's killer cops.

The disturbing video taken by Keith Lamont Scott's wife showing the moment her husband was killed by police in Charlotte provides a sobering window into the high level of compliance that people of color feel they need to maintain in their interactions with police.

We need to statutize what is permissible and what is not permissible. If a law enforcement agent uses a clearly unapproved technique like the knee that was on the neck of George Floyd for over eight minutes, no law enforcement agent thinks that that's right and that officer should be held accountable.

If you've never feared the police - if you don't get a dull ache in the pit of your stomach when you see red and blue flashing lights, even when you know you're not doing anything wrong - consider yourself lucky.

It sounds terribly cynical, but the real surprise in the Philando Castile case is not that the officer was acquitted but that he was charged at all. The prosecutors in the case deserve great credit for even trying. But no one should be shocked about how it turned out.

If I see a cop, it's not like, 'Oh, there's a cop who's gonna keep me safe.' It's more, 'There's a cop who might be having a bad day, so don't make eye contact.'

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.

I respect the police officers, but something you learn as a young black man in this country is that... life is a little bit different for you even though, on the surface, it seems to be the same.

Most people who are not of color, their parents didn't need to tell them how to act around police or what to do if they ever got pulled over. Never, not once. We are taught that in the black neighborhoods. I've been profiled and pulled over, so it's not like I don't know.

I think people have always had ambiguous relationships toward the police because of the position in society they occupy. But that anxiety and that animosity isn't as strong in other places as it is in the U.S., partially because the police are armed here.

No matter what his crimes were, Alton Sterling did not deserve to be executed for them. Look, guys, the punishment for resisting arrest shouldn't be death. The punishment for selling bootleg CDs shouldn't be death. The punishment for having a gun in an open-carry state shouldn't be death. The punishment for being a black man shouldn't be death.