Police Legitimacy Quotes

So the first task of a police force is not to fight crime and enforce the law. It is to establish legitimacy with the law-abiding citizenry and then fight crime and enforce the law.

What the police in their ignorance have not figured out is that they have lost all credibility since World War II. They are sort of parasites on the fringe of society and do no particular good for anyone except possibly themselves.

Police can't be successful if they're not viewed as legitimate by the community, and a community will not be safe if the police are not engaged in a respectful, constitutional partnership with the community.

Studies show that if people think that they are treated fairly by the police, that matters almost more than what the result is. If you get stopped for a traffic stop and feel that you are treated courteously and fairly, you are much more likely to accept the fact that you got a speeding ticket.

This is the problem with the United States: there's no leadership. A leader would say, 'Police brutality is an oxymoron. There are no brutal police. The minute you become brutal you're no longer police.' So, what, we're not dealing with police. We're dealing with a federally authorized gang.

I think people have always had ambiguous relationships toward the police because of the position in society they occupy. But that anxiety and that animosity isn't as strong in other places as it is in the U.S., partially because the police are armed here.

We can only have true public safety with public trust.

Any law enforcement authority can only be of value if the people support the law enforcement authority.

I think the more we see more officers holding each other accountable, the more we will see people trust cops in this country.

Ninety-plus percent of police/community relations is simply wonderful - where people obey the law, don't resist arrest, don't attack cops and don't threaten lives, everyone gets along just fine. When the president [Barack Obama] constantly sides with the worst thugs out there and with the Black Lives Matter terrorists, and the media lies constantly, we the people better get to the truth ASAP.

I find that people want aggressive policing if they as a community feel they are part of it. They don't want aggressive policing if they feel it's being imposed upon them and they are a target.