Matt Popovich

33 Jarring Police Brutality Quotes

The systemic racism and injustice makes us feel like it's Rodney King all over again. Use these quotes to eloquently express the old adage - 'F*** the police.'
Sade Andria Zabala
July 26, 2016
“A system cannot fail those it was never built to protect.”
— Vann Newkirk, via Time
Tagged: Politics, Government, Corruption, Violence, Police Brutality
“The system’s failure to catch killers effectively made black lives cheap.”
— Jill Leovy, Ghettoside
Tagged: criminal justice, racism, America, Politics
“They were the interchangeable faces of violence and politics.”
— Ben Okri, The Famished Road
Tagged: Violence, Politics
“A police officer in America faces a 1 in 1000 chance of ever facing jail time for killing another human being. #FreddieGray”
— Samuel Sinyangwe, via twitter.com
Tagged: Police, racism, Freddie Gray
“Now, what we’ve been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people every day. So what’s going to happen is we’re going to have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function and ours.”
— Jesse Williams, Bet Awards Humanitarian Award Acceptance Speech, 2016
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, Equality, Justice, Injustice, America, Structure, foundation, racism
“Unless the powerful are capable of learning to respect the dignity of their victims, impassable barriers will remain, and the world will be doomed to violence, cruelty, and bitter suffering.”
— Noam Chomsky, Violence and Dignity: Reflections on the Middle East
Tagged: Violence, Powerful, Cruelty, Sad World, Middle East
“#AltonSterling was the 154th black person killed by police this year (to date).”
— Samuel Sinyangwe, via twitter.com
Tagged: Alton Sterling, Police Killings Of Black People, Black Lives Matter
“Black men are 25% of Baton Rogue population but 100% of those killed by Baton Rogue police.”
— Samuel Sinyangwe, via twitter.com
Tagged: Percentage Of People Killed By Baton Rogue Police, Black Lives Matter
“On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with.”
— Redditt Hudson, I'm a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing
Tagged: Police Brutality, Corruption
“No matter what an officer has done to a black person, that officer can always cover himself in the running narrative of heroism, risk, and sacrifice that is available to a uniformed police officer by virtue of simply reporting for duty.”
— Redditt Hudson, I'm a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing
Tagged: Police Brutality, Corruption, Black Lives Matter, racism
“Police abuse in black and brown communities is generations old. It is nothing new. It has become more visible to mainstream America largely because of the proliferation of personal recording devices, cellphone cameras, video recorders — they're everywhere. We need police officers. We also need them to be held accountable to the communities they serve.”
— Redditt Hudson, I'm a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing
Tagged: Police Brutality, Corruption, Black Lives Matter, racism, Technology
“Because this? This is not justice, or peace, or progress. It reeks of death, the stench of corrupt power wielders, it reeks of silence, of institutionalized murder, of heartbreak, of irreparable damages; this feels like waterboarding, like syndicated torture for the masses.”
— Joel Leon, Black Lives Matter: A Fairy Tale
Tagged: Black Lives Matter (C1), Black Lives Matter, Justice, racism
“Columbia, South Carolina just fired the CAPTAIN of the Fire Department after he posted online that he was considering running over some Black Lives Matter activists if he saw them.
America. 2016.”
— Shaun King, America. 2016.
Tagged: Black Lives Matter (C1), Black Lives Matter, Police Brutality
“When people say ‘Black Lives Matter, that doesn’t mean blue lives don’t matter.”
— Barack Obama, NATO Summit 2016
Tagged: blacklivesmatter, Matter, black lives, protest, Ignorance, Change
“It is up to us to take a stand and demand that they ‘stop killing us,' We’re going to stand up as a community and fight against anyone who believes that murder or any violent action by those who are sworn to protect us should consistently go unpunished.”
— Beyoncé Knowles, FREEDOM
Tagged: Freedom, Black Lives Matter, black lives, protest, Action, Change, Progress, racism, USA, America
“When you know, we been hurt, been down before, nigga
When my pride was low, lookin' at the world like, 'where do we go, nigga?'
And we hate Popo, wanna kill us dead in the street for sure, nigga
I'm at the preacher's door
My knees gettin' weak and my gun might blow but we gon' be alright”
— Kendrick Lamar, Alright - Kendrick Lamar
Tagged: Freedom, Police Brutality, black lives, Black Lives Matter, Matter, Fight
“It seems that it's either pro-cop and anti-black or pro-black and anti-cop, when, in reality, you can be pro-cop and pro-black, which is what we should all be. It is what we should be aiming for.”
— Trevor Noah, July 7, 2016 - Julia Stiles
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, black lives, Matter, trevor noah, Police Brutality, Police, Justice, Movement, protest
“...you can truly grieve for every officer who has been lost in the line of duty in this country and still be troubled by cases of police overreach. Those two ideas are not mutually exclusive. You can have great regard for law enforcement and still want them to be held to high standards.”
— John Stewart, Jon Stewart Fesses Up to 'One Factual Error' in His Police Shootings Report, Then Curses Out Fox News (Video)
Tagged: Police, Black Lives Matter, black lives, Matter, Movement, Change, Progress
“We need a special prosecutor, now. And a prosecutor who can look at these cases of police brutality or police wrongdoing and make real judgments and decide whether people should go to trial.”
— Russell Simmons, EXCLUSIVE: Russell Simmons Joins 25,000 Marching in NYC, Calls For Special Prosecutor [VIDEO]
Tagged: Police, prosecution, Police Brutality, wrongdoing, black lives, Black Lives Matter, black lives matter movement
“What it means is that we are all sick and tired of seeing unarmed people shot by police officers, That young people in African-American communities are harassed by police officers, where police departments are not there to be supportive but are in many cases oppressive, and that’s an issue that has to be addressed.”
— Bernie Sanders, Two Guys From Brooklyn: The Bernie Sanders Interview by Spike Lee
Tagged: Police, Black Lives Matter, black lives, Community, african-american, Movement, Election, Progress, Oppression, issues, Society
“Taking on systemic racism—and rebuilding trust between police and citizens—will require contributions from us all.”
— Hillary ClintonVerified account
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, black lives matter movement, systematic racism
“Who the hell wants to have a police officer put their hand on them or yell and scream at them? It’s an awful experience. Every black man I know has had this experience. Every one of them. It is hard to believe that the world is your oyster if the police can rough you up without punishment. And when I talked to minority youth, almost every single one of them mentions lower-level uses of force as the reason why they believe the world is corrupt.”
— Roland G. Fryer Jr., Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, blacklives, Research, Data, racism, Police Brutality
“I don’t know where we go from here because those of us who recognize the injustice are not the problem. Law enforcement, militarized and indifferent to black lives, is the problem.”
— Roxane Gay, Alton Sterling and When Black Lives Stop Mattering
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, protest, Movement, black lives, black lives matter organization, nyt, racism, Injustice
“To be black in America is to exist in haunting, mundane proximity to death at all moments.”
— Hannah Giorgis, I Am Tired Of Watching Black People Die
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, black lives matter movement, blacklives, black lives matter organization, Injustice, racism, America
“The losers under this injustice system are the young people I know and love.”
— Mariame Kaba, Summer Heat
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, blacklivesmatter, black lives matter organization, Injustice, Police Brutality
“If the only time you have a public opinion on civil violence in this country is when police face harm or sadly, death, then you come across as disingenuous, your intentions, suspicious, and your perspective, riddled with bias and prejudice. Empathy is not a limited resource.”
— Kovie Biakolo
Tagged: Violence, Prejudice, America 2016
“For now, let’s focus on what we already know — deep in our hearts. We know there is something wrong with our country. There is too much violence, too much hate, too much senseless killing, too many people dead who shouldn’t be. And we know there is clear evidence that African Americans are much more likely to be killed in police incidents than any other group of Americans.”
— Hillary Clinton, We owe our children better than this. We owe ourselves better than this. — Hillary for America
Tagged: Hillary Clinton, 2016 Election, Guns, Race, Police
“I want you to know the 24-hour news cycle moves on — I won’t. This is so important to who we are, what kind of nation we are making for our children and our grandchildren. As President Obama said yesterday, and as we all know in our hearts to be true: We are better than this. And if we push hard enough, and long enough, we can bend the arc of history toward justice.”
— Hillary Clinton, We owe our children better than this. We owe ourselves better than this. — Hillary for America
Tagged: Hillary Clinton, 2016 Election, Guns, Violence
“I demand a war to bring the dead boy back
no matter what his name is this time.”
— Danez Smith, not an elegy for Mike Brown
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, Poetry, Police Brutality
“I am sick of writing this poem
but bring the boy. his new name
his same old body. ordinary, black
dead thing. bring him & we will mourn
until we forget what we are mourning
& isn’t that what being black is about?”
— Danez Smith, not an elegy for Mike Brown
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, Poetry, Police Brutality