Mark Thomas Quotes

The prison officials practiced such excessive cruelty that they were jeopardizing the entire system

When a government forcibly holds enough people indefinitely without trial, it evokes the kinds of raids, detention, and abuses of power associated with authoritarian states - or darker periods in American history.

Joe Arpaio needs no help from me getting attention. For years he has been a beacon of bigotry and intolerance for all the world to see. The list of human and civil-rights abuses he's committed in Maricopa County is long and well documented.

When men are arrested without any legal basis and for political reasons, it's merely a routine, everyday occurrence in Russia, and hardly anyone has any sympathy.

'Blind Curve,' the book I'm working on now, sprang from a crazy incident that happened to me last year while on my book tour. I was pulled out of my car for a minor traffic violation - an incident that escalated into my being thrown into cuffs and told I was going to jail. Except in my story, the hero doesn't get off as easily as I did.

I was arrested three times and tortured once.

A Committee of Investigation in South Caroline lately found a number of innocent persons in convict stockades. They were being chained, flogged and cruelly overworked

Police were frequently involved in arbitrary arrests and detentions, often motivated by attempts to collect bribes. Some of these problems could be attributed to the very poor working conditions of the police, including low rates of pay

Every time there is a perceived crisis, law-enforcement agencies and legislators overreact, and usually due process and civil liberties suffer.

Government troops [police] are worse to the civilians than are the bandits whom the troops are trying to eliminate.

I didn't confess. I was interrogated. They acted like my answers were wrong. They told me I was wrong, that I didn't remember correctly, that I had to remember correctly. And if I didn't, I would never see my family.

The police have the right to prosecute people, but not use violence.

I was shocked when I heard that Farghadani had been sentenced to 12 years and nine months in prison on spurious charges, as Amnesty International notes, of 'spreading propaganda against the system,' 'insulting members of the parliament through paintings' and 'insulting the Supreme Leader' with her cartoon.

Police violence against black women is very real.

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

We're a country that allowed waterboarding and indefinite detention, and we're a country where the NYPD Intelligence Division has police files on what Muslims think of the State of the Union address.

If you suspend the Geneva Conventions, give the green light to anything that will get intelligence, round up thousands all over the globe with reckless disregard for guilt or innocence, you are effectively and knowingly issuing orders to seize innocent people and torture them. Any president who decides to do that and then says it was not his intention to do that is a fraud or a fool.

Sometimes I'll be somewhere, and the cops will show up to kick me out and end up just asking for a photo.

After I got arrested the Filipino government unshackled me. I knew first-hand how they violated my rights and I could speak about that from experience.

I am absolutely certain that my unlawful detention by the Thai authorities was motivated by their fear of youth movements around the world.

I was whisked away by the Rajasthan police from Ahmedabad as soon as they realised I had applied for bail. They first put me in a filthy cell in the police station, then took me to jail where I was locked up with five hardcore criminals. It was a nightmare. We had to sleep on the cold floor. That's where one sleeps in jail.

It was my long-held belief that police brutality would increase under the Trump administration.

Trump's pardon of Arpaio may not get as much attention as Russian influence or Trump's apparent obstruction of justice in the Mueller investigation. But to me, as a woman of color, it is a clear abuse of power for the U.S. president to pardon a sheriff who targeted people for arrest because of their ethnicity.

Cops in New York City don't have the best reputation. It's a fast-paced city, and they deal with a lot, and many people have seen lots of cops interact with the public utilizing what can be gently called 'not the best customer service.'