Lawrence O'Donnell Quotes

The way police do what they do is under the microscope. You've got people on the one side saying, 'We need to be holding our police accountable.' And you've got a lot of people who support the police saying they're being 'unfairly vilified.'

The worst teacher in America could never do as much damage as the worst police officer in America. But the right wing has never even been slightly curious about evaluating the job performance of police officers.

Calling for police reform is not calling for police retribution.

There's good cops and bad cops, and the good cops have to hold the bad cops accountable. We have to hold the bad cops accountable, too.

Let me be clear: as I have said repeatedly, I do not believe that all police officers are bad, nor do I believe that most are bad. But there must be a transparent, impartial and fair system to judge those that engage in criminal or unethical acts.

There are 18,000 different police forces in the United States and sometimes something wrong happens.

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?

There's a larger conversation we need to have about the role of police officers, their relationship to the people as enemy or executioner, when they're not supposed to be either.

There are those who profess to support law enforcement but who have attempted to undermine the efforts of hard-working officers who make difficult decisions.

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.

I think the only thing that's really going to make a change in terms of how we feel as citizens in terms of safety and our relationship with the police is if we start seeing more federal indictments, arrests, and convictions of police officers.

I am always looking for stories that have not been told too much, and one story that I think is really gripping and important is what police officers go through.

For me, in trying to talk about something like policing, it's such a huge issue, and it's an issue that's very local and very personalized to communities, to cities, to legislators, and so, in that way, I think as we started looking into talking about policing, the thing that you realize is that you can't paint everything with the same brush.

We don't ever want to create an environment where people are afraid of their own local police officers.

Nobody wants bad cops off the street more than good cops.

My accident happened in what should have been one of the safest places to be: in a police station, at the hands of trained police officers. So more guns are not the answer.

When you have police officers who abuse citizens, you erode public confidence in law enforcement. That makes the job of good police officers unsafe.

It seems to me that before we give federal funds to police departments, we ought to mandate that they have body cams.

I have no hatred for cops. I have hatred for racists and brutal people, but not necessarily the cops. The cops are just doing what they're told to do.

American police departments, by and large, are less corrupt than any other police departments in the world.

No officer should be allowed to behave as if they are above the law just because they are responsible for upholding the law. Permitting and protecting even the smallest acts of abuse by a tiny fraction of our officers leads to a culture where extreme acts of abuse are more likely, just like what happened to Laquan McDonald.

I still have admiration for the vast majority of police officers, but there is no denying that some are guilty of mistreating the people they are supposed to serve.

Every American expects and deserves the protection of law enforcement that is effective, responsive, respectful and, most importantly, constitutional.

I've spent my life in the police profession, and I'm proud of that. But I am also very cognizant of the profession's limitations, its potential for abuse, and its potential negative impact.

There's a bigger percentage of good cops than bad cops. But the bad cops should be penalised like regular people.