Riot Control Quotes

They formed up in marching order, whilst at their lead rushed a man … shouting wildly, ‘Fall in and follow me’ …. As the crowd continued to advance an order was given: ‘Draw-Ready-Charge!’ Men in the crowd went down like ninepins, and the rest fled helter skelter. Constables wearing bandoliers filled with bullets and with rifles at the ready were jumping out of caged cars…. Batons were useless and the police were compelled to fire.

We shall guard as zealously the rights of the striker as those of the employer. But when riot is menaced it is different. The mob takes its own chance. Order will be kept at whatever cost. If it comes to shooting we shall shoot to hit. No blank cartridges or firing over the head.

No tempest or conflagration, however great, is harder to quell than mob carried away by the novelty of power.

Shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting any stores in our city.

I don't know how many people have ever seen the National Guard break in somewhere, but they mean business.

Bring on your tear gas, bring on your grenades, your new supplies of Mace, your state troopers and even your national guards. But let the record show we ain't going to be turned around.

It's not about the stuff. The issue is how we use that stuff and how do we train people to use that stuff. Do we use that stuff to confront people who are protesting in a community? Do we use a sniper rifle to see closer in a crowd? That's where it breaks down.

The madness of mobs or the insolence of soldiers, or both, when too near to each other, occasion some mischief.

Who will protect the public when the police violate the law?

The mob became unruly and the police were forced to resort to sex.

I got my head bashed in at a demonstration against the Vietnam War. Police were losing control because they were up against a world they really didn't understand.

The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.

I will never forget the first time I was teargassed or the night I hid under my steering wheel as the SWAT vehicle drove down a residential street. I will never forget that it was illegal - in St Louis, in the fall of 2014 - to stand still.

As a protester, I protested because I had to, not because it was exciting. I don't want to get tear-gassed again.

We paid a big price for not stopping it -- that is the looting and the security -- because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness. We never had enough troops on the ground

It does seem to me that the laboring classes were possessed of the Devil. I believe in the free application of rifle balls, grape and canister to mobs.

When violence strikes [riots], then those in public responsibility have an immediate ... job, not to analyze, but to end disorder.

In the event of fire in any of the public buildings troops would be of vast service in the protection of public property, and should insurrection break out the protection of life and property would be more safe guarded by our company of regulars, than by the whole City.

Most Americans probably aren't aware that there was a time in this country when tanks and cavalry were massed on Pennsylvania Avenue to chase away the unemployed.

Tear gas, rubber bullets, and I would have arrested all the leaders. Oh, only a disgusting drunkard like ex-President Yahya Khan could have sullied himself with an operation carried out so badly and bloodily.

I can see in your eyes, I can see in your faces, I can see you cry. But what I want to say, there's no reason to cry. Do not, in the name of peace, go in the streets and riot.

I never saw anything more like real warfare in my life - only the attack was all on one side. The police, in spite of their numbers, apparently thought they could not cope with the crowd.

The use of water cannon could have changed the face of British policing; it would have made a huge difference to British policing.

I was making Molotov cocktails long before I knew the name for them.

Nobody cared about the riot until they thought it might spill into their nice neighborhoods. Then they got scared and called the National Guard.