Angie Thomas Quotes

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.

It sounds terribly cynical, but the real surprise in the Philando Castile case is not that the officer was acquitted but that he was charged at all. The prosecutors in the case deserve great credit for even trying. But no one should be shocked about how it turned out.

The full resources of the Department of Justice have been committed to the investigation into Michael Brown's death.

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.

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.

The Ferguson Grand Jury's decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown is a miscarriage of justice. It is a slap in the face to Americans nationwide who continue to hope and believe that justice will prevail.

At the time when I was in college, Oscar Grant had just lost his life in Oakland, Calif. He was an unarmed young black male who had a record. And at the time when his death was making headlines, more people were talking about what he had done in his past than the fact that he unjustly lost his life.

#BlackLivesMatter brought a new sense of urgency, audacity, and outrage to the issue of police violence against black men that has made it impossible to ignore, to cover up, or to justify.

There is nothing just or fair about what happened to Jordan Edwards. And his story is yet another in a long line of tragedies that now powerfully remind us of the long way we still have to go in creating a fair and just relationship between law enforcement, our criminal justice system, and the public our laws are supposed to protect.

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.

I'm sick of watching 'Blue Lives Matter' supporters idly stand by any police officer simply because he wears blue, ignoring the facts that should make them cringe in disbelief and horror. Police brutality is systemic, not anecdotal.

There is police brutality. People of color have been targeted by police.

I love cops. I think you have to walk in their shoes to understand, you know when they use violence, Michael Brown in Ferguson, a classic case.

All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy, and they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.

The police killings of unarmed African Americans has got to stop.

On a personal level, I've seen a lot in my time as attorney general, but few things have affected me as greatly as my visit to Ferguson. I had the chance to meet with the family of Michael Brown. I spoke to them not just as attorney general but as a father of a teenage son myself.

From racial profiling and being pulled over just for 'driving while black' to this new phenomenon of killing unarmed people out of some preconceived idea of fear, our lives and our children's lives are not being valued.

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

Following Michael Brown's death, I went to Ferguson and met with his parents. I stood with them as they tried to hold their heads high and deal with both their immense loss and the larger issues of police-community relations.

I explained to the president that I've been pleased with my conversations with the Attorney General and Civil Rights Division regarding their helpful understanding that they aren't taking over this investigation, but are conducting a parallel review of the events that led to Michael Brown's death.

We're not anti-police... we're anti-police brutality.

Michael Brown happened to be black. Trayvon Martin happened to be black. Eric Garner was a black man. So this pattern continues over and over.

Young Black men are shot dead by police at 21 times the rate of young white men.

The grand jury system - not just in Ferguson, but nationwide - needs a hard look. Millions feel that officers who are trigger-happy are handed a license to shoot - based not on facts, but on stereotypes the officers carry.

The fact is, in the minds of many, Trayvon Martin received the appropriate punishment for a true crime: He was black, male and dared to walk outside. In life, young Trayvon was just a teenager; in death, he has been transformed into a scary, lurking, suspicious, prone-to-violence spook.