Adrian McKinty Quotes

What the cops did to Rodney King was wrong, and the officers who beat him should be sent straight to prison.

A militarized police force facing down innocent protesters with sniper rifles and machine guns is totally unacceptable in America.

When you loot or behave violently, you give grounds to those that try to justify illegal police abuse. You become the poster child for them to say, 'See, we have no choice but to shoot and kill, or use a chokehold, because just look at the way they behave.'

Hundreds of policemen and detectives, swinging nightsticks, blackjacks, and bare fists, rushed into the crowd, hitting out at all with whom they came into contract, chasing many across the street and into adjacent thoroughfares and pushing hundreds off their feet. From all parts of the scene of battle came the screams of women and cries of men with bloody heads and faces.

The police seemed to lose their head completely as they dashed into the crowds on their horses and slashed out with their clubs.

Police cannot be allowed to continue aggressive, violent, and often unconstitutional policing with impunity.

I've had friends who have been beaten up by police officers who put phone books in their T-shirts and then beat them up, then drive off.

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.

You shouldn't be shot just because someone yells, "Halt" or resisting arrest or running away from being arrested.

If people are being abused or even killed during an arrest, this is highly disturbing.

There's plenty of law at the end of a nightstick

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.

It is especially jarring when police officers are the killers because they are an entity of the state itself, so when the state shows a lack of sensitivity, community members feel it is an obvious example of abuse..

When the cops are trying to arrest you, if you fight back, things go wrong.

Michael Brown was a criminal who had robbed a convenience store and then attempted to kill Police Officer Darren Wilson. Michael Brown never raised his hands above his head and never tried to surrender. He was killed in self-defense by Officer Wilson after Brown first attempted to take the officer's weapon away and then charged at him.

There's no book to figure out how not to become a victim of police brutality.

Michael Brown's death and the suffocation of Eric Garner in New York for selling untaxed cigarettes indicate something is wrong with criminal justice in America.

I can remember being young and being outside and watch guys go through what they go through with the police, and old ladies come outside their house and be like, 'Oh, Lord, they're hitting him,' or whatever is happening. You see it right in front of your face.

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

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?

Police brutality is definitely still very alive and active.

There are some policemen who overuse force, especially when there's an African-American involved, regardless of age.

No one's pro-police brutality.

It's a tragedy. It was tragedy for Freddie Gray and the family. It was a tragedy for the city. And we're still trying to figure out how it happened and why it happened.