David Lammy Quotes

I know there are some good American police. But I grew up in a country where we were afraid of the police.

I'm not against the police; I'm just afraid of them.

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 fear cops and have never felt the protection of them.

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

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.

If you are a black person growing up in America, chances are pretty good that you have experienced the police pulling you over in front of your mother's house because you 'had a headlight out.'

Americans live in a country where African-American young men are twenty-five times more likely to lose their lives at the hands of the police than their white counterparts.

Black men in ghetto communities (and many who live in middle class communities) are targeted by the police at early ages, often before they're old enough to vote. They're routinely stopped, frisked, and searched without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.

In my neighborhood... they view the police as someone who comes to take their loved ones away.

My own perception of cops was that they came into your neighborhood, they roughed up people that you loved for no reason and took them away. As a child you saw that.

Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.

I've always had a natural fear of the police, or abuse of their power.

How can I make a movie about the violence of the police if the police aren't going to let me film it?

Because I'm a young black man driving a really nice, expensive car, I sometimes get harassed when I'm rolling through a ghetto neighbourhood.

For people of color - especially African Americans - the idea that racist cops might frame members of their community is no abstract notion, let alone an exercise in irrational conspiracy theorizing. Rather, it speaks to a social reality about which blacks are acutely aware.

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.

The idea that cops need to intimidate people of color, to violate our rights in order to protect people of color is like some Islamist societies’ saying the only way to protect women is to keep them under Sharia law.

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

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..

We need the cops, especially in the black community.

Not all cops are bad, but this kind of harassment has been going on for years in the ghetto.

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.

Our country has a painful history of mistrust between police departments and people of color. The overuse of stop-and-frisk has made those divisions much worse.

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?