Ha Ha Clinton-Dix Quotes

As I said last week in the wake of the grand jury decision, I think Ferguson laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis or that area, and is not unique to our time, and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color.

One of the crises that we have to deal with is a crisis of law enforcement officials that are not physically capable enough to handle without taking out the gun.

We have to have a national conversation about how police forces should interact with the African-American community, who happens to be paying their salary, who want to be served and protected, who these officers are take an oath to do so.

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.

Unfortunately, in places like Ferguson, in New York City and in some communities across this nation, there is a disconnect between police agencies and the citizens they serve, predominately in communities of color.

Growing up where I'm from, some people are afraid of cops. They don't really like cops. And what a lot of people don't realize is, they're really not the bad guys. They're really on our side, they're really trying to help us out. And sometimes, we don't understand that.

I think that a lot of these cops have been put in very difficult situations and tasked with very difficult jobs with very little training and very little help.

There's no question that, in nearly seven weeks of nightly demonstrations, the police have done many things right, and they've done some things wrong as well.

I'm dedicated to healing the wounds between police and minority communities so both sides feel safe again.

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.

I think a lot of police procedurals are very conventional. With the stuff I'm doing, I'm trying to approach the institution of the police in a different way.

In Baltimore they can't do police work to save their lives. Now because of Freddie Gray they're not even getting out of the car and policing corners - they're on a job slowdown, basically. Right now if the police stopped being brutal, if we got police shooting under control, and the use of excessive force, if we have a meaningful societal response to all that stuff, and the racism that underlies it, the question still remains: what are they policing, and why?

I remember my first run-in with cops. It took me really getting to hang, well after that, with cops who were cool, and realizing, 'Okay, there are some bad ones.' I ran into some bad ones in Columbus, Ohio, but they're not all bad.

I grew up in the hood, and I was raised to hate cops. But then, I started to realize that they're people, and they have lives, too.

The horrific cases in Ferguson, in Staten Island with the death of Eric Garner, and all across the country serve as stark reminders that we must have a say in who polices us, and how that policing is done. We must, we must, let our voices be heard on Election Day.

When you have police officers who abuse citizens, you erode public confidence in law enforcement. That makes the job of good police officers unsafe.

Communities of color don't understand what it means to be a police officer, the fear that police officers have in just being on the streets.

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

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.

I think it's a self-serving effort to put a political agenda above the safety of our law enforcement officers.

I have absolutely no confidence in the Ferguson police, the county prosecutor.

As mayor, I would support law enforcement, not knock it down.

The term "free society" is a meaningless, empty phrase if it does not mean a society that is free from harassment from its own police.

What we need in our countries is a good police force with a civilian mentality and some cheap light arms, not an army that needs to maintain its power with sophisticated weapons

In order for us to respect law enforcement, it is necessary for law enforcement to respect us.