Mark Shields Quotes

We need to have law enforcement and the African-American community work together for the safety of everybody.

You need better relationships between the communities and the police, because in some cases, it's not good.But you look at Dallas, where the relationships were really studied, the relationships were really a beautiful thing, and then five police officers were killed one night very violently.

I'm going to do everything I can to restore trust and build back those bonds between the police and communities.

We have greater awareness of where we're falling short than we used to. Just take the example of community police relations.

You also had in Detroit that summer, an early variation of Ferguson. A black prostitute was shot in the back by police. And all of the efforts that a very progressive police chief and mayor of that period had put into trying to restore race relations started to fall apart again, and you could see that unraveling for several years until the riots or rebellion of 1967.

The truth of the matter is that the problem of police shootings and reactions in the community.

Coming up in the Bay Area and being African American in a city that has a history of complex issues of violent crime, interaction with the police is always intense. That's something you have to learn. My mom taught me at a young age that if ever a cop stops you, you put your hands up and freeze - don't move.

We are safer when communities respect the police and the police respect the communities.

Having the support of our communities is absolutely essential to productive and sustainable crime prevention efforts. While there are law enforcement agencies that have meaningful and transparent relationships with all segments of their communities, it is fair to say that there are other agencies that need to further enhance relationships and build trust within their communities, particularly among disenfranchised segments.

I'm dedicated to healing the wounds between police and minority communities so both sides feel safe again.

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.

We have to restore trust between communities and the police.

The share of Americans who say race relations are bad in this country is the highest it's been in decades, much of it amplified by shootings of African-Americans by police, as we've seen recently in Charlotte and Tulsa.

We need to rebuild bonds of trust between our police officers and our communities.

Obama believes the cops are the problem. That's why his new philosophy is to have them withdraw and refrain and not be seen because just their presence is provocative.

I'm not blind to the fact that we have to do a better job with our relationships between the community and police.

All Americans should be deeply troubled by the fatal shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. We've seen such tragedies far too many times, and our hearts go out to the families and communities who've suffered such a painful loss.

For an ordinary citizen, what is the common interaction you have with a police officer? When they pull you over for speeding, or when they write you a ticket for parking. The rest of the time is patrolling minority neighborhoods like an occupying army. It's suppression of blacks, and it's revenue enhancement. Surveillance is a Band-Aid. That's like saying, "Let's surveil the SS." No! Let's get rid of the SS!

What stands out to me in America was all the police vs. citizens turmoil. It's decades of bad policing, bad schooling, racism, bigotry and other factors finally spilling into mainstream culture. I would like to see America evolve on how the laws are enforced on the streets.

When killings of black by policeman happen, there's the victim, there's the family, there are the police, there are the politicians, and there is the community. Everybody is affected. Everybody has a point of view. We really wanted to dig into that and get to know all these different people that are changed by it.

We need to support our police officers and make sure that community policing becomes something that becomes the standard across the country.

When African-American police officers involved in a police action shooting involving an African-American, why would Hillary Clinton accuse that African-American police officer of implicit bias?

As I said last week in the wake of the grand jury decision, I think Ferguson laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis or that area, and is not unique to our time, and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color.

Michael Brown's tragic death has revealed a deep distrust between some in the Ferguson community and its police force. It also developed a need to develop and widely disseminate law enforcement best practices for responding to public demonstrations.

There is no doubt that Stop-and-Frisk does not yield the desired results, and it is apparent that it disproportionately targets minority communities.