Leonard Boswell Quotes

I do believe that supporting our First Amendment rights and supporting local law enforcement are not mutually exclusive.

Just as the police review their operational tactics, so we in the Home Office will review the powers available to the police.

I believe that successfully addressing our national security needs while protecting our basic freedoms and civil liberties requires continual Congressional oversight, and I will continue to work to assert the role of this body in carrying out this grave responsibility.

There is insufficient support for the police and safety and law enforcement, in general, in the city council.

When the penalty for a policeman's mistake is to put a criminal back out on the street, then we are hurting America; we are hurting our law-abiding citizens.

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.

You’ve got to have safeguards [on law enforcement authorities] if we’re going to continue to have the freedom we’ve had for the past 200 years.

We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.

I don't understand it and haven't understood in this world of technology: where every building has a camera, every ATM has a camera, why don't we have cameras on police officers?

In millions of encounters each year between the police and the public, it may be too much to expect that every officer will always get it right. But it is not too much to expect that we can put the right safeguards in place to hold officers accountable when they get it wrong.

If a police officer is looking for a criminal, he or she might stop a number of people in that particular area and ask to see their driver's license. No one bellyaches about civil rights or privacy issues. We're just happy the cops are trying to find the bad guy.

I realize there are a lot of folks in my political party who disagree with me on this, but I think the Patriot Act is an important law enforcement tool, and it makes our country safer.

I think most people accept that it is necessary to have some surveillance in a democratic society. I think most people accept that it's important to have limits and clear safeguards on that.

Communities do need police, but law enforcement needs to be much more transparent and held accountable for their actions. We also need increased resources for mental health services, affordable housing, education, jobs training, and much more to truly address social and economic issues in our communities.

Here in Washington State, I've supported efforts to provide our law enforcement with the proper training and resources required to meet their changing and demanding needs of their job. In doing so, I feel that the community and the law enforcement relationship will gratefully benefit from a renewed sense of responsibility and accountability.

The FBI's mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. To carry out that mission, we're entrusted with a lot of authority, so our actions are subject to close oversight - from the courts, from our elected leaders, and from independent entities like the inspector general.

We should craft our laws to allow images of criminal suspects to be captured in public - but also to make sure that the government does not unduly infringe on the privacy rights of innocent citizens.

It's a difficult thing for a city to be sued by the department of justice and to be told that your police department is systematically failing to serve the people of the state or the city.

I wouldn't call it "police reform," but I would say that police procedure enhancement could be helpful - these police shootings are absolutely horrible.

There has to be a readjustment of resources that is being diverted to police and policing as opposed to community health services, and there certainly has to be control over the police by the communities that they are supposed to protect and serve.

If we are to assess the rationality of government expenditures to protect the lives of Americans through massive domestic surveillance, we need to compare this program to others aimed at saving American lives.

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.

President Trump rightly points out that law enforcement is mostly made up of good people putting themselves in harm's way to protect us. He lauds the men and women in blue and often talks about the need to make it easier for the cops to do their jobs.

There's some men and women out there that are doing their job the right way. They're protecting and serving complete strangers in their communities the right way. And it's a thankless job. Obviously, there's a lot of information out on cops not doing their jobs correctly, but the ones that are should be celebrated.

No, I absolutely do not support defunding the police. But it's clear we have been investing too much in force and need to reinvest in understanding and serving our communities.