33 Jarring Police Brutality Quotes

33 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.'

“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, sadeandriazabala.com

Tagged: Black Lives Matter, Poetry, Police Brutality

“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, vox.com

Tagged: Police Brutality, Corruption

“The losers under this injustice system are the young people I know and love.”

— Mariame Kaba, thenewinquiry.com

Tagged: Black Lives Matter, blacklivesmatter, black lives matter organization, Injustice, Police Brutality

“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…”

— Roland G. Fryer Jr., nytimes.com

Tagged: Black Lives Matter, blacklives, Research, Data, racism

“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, play.spotify.com

Tagged: Freedom, Police Brutality, black lives, Black Lives Matter, Matter

“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, facebook.com

Tagged: Black Lives Matter (C1), Black Lives Matter, Police Brutality

“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, newsone.com

Tagged: Police, prosecution, Police Brutality, wrongdoing, black lives

“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, vox.com

Tagged: Police Brutality, Corruption, Black Lives Matter, racism

“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…”

— Hillary Clinton, medium.com

Tagged: Hillary Clinton, 2016 Election, Guns, Race, Police

“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…”

— Bernie Sanders, hollywoodreporter.com

Tagged: Police, Black Lives Matter, black lives, Community, african-american

“Black men are 25% of Baton Rogue population but 100% of those killed by Baton Rogue police.”

— Samuel Sinyangwe, twitter.com

Tagged: Percentage Of People Killed By Baton Rogue Police, Black Lives Matter

“When people say ‘Black Lives Matter, that doesn’t mean blue lives don’t matter.”

— Barack Obama, bustle.com

Tagged: blacklivesmatter, Matter, black lives, protest, Ignorance

“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, cc.com

Tagged: Black Lives Matter, black lives, Matter, trevor noah, Police Brutality

“...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, thewrap.com

Tagged: Police, Black Lives Matter, black lives, Matter, Movement

“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, facebook.com

Tagged: Violence, Prejudice, America 2016

“You see them [Black Lives Matter protesters] marching and you see them on occasion, at least — I’ve seen it — where they’re essentially calling, ‘Death to police.’ And that’s not acceptable.’”

— Donald Trump, washingtonpost.com

Tagged: Donald Trump, 2016 RNC Convention, 2016 Election Lies, Black Lives Matter, Crime

“Taking on systemic racism—and rebuilding trust between police and citizens—will require contributions from us all.”

— Hillary ClintonVerified account, twitter.com

Tagged: Black Lives Matter, black lives matter movement, systematic racism

“When all this takes place, more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid. We can’t simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism. To have your experience denied l…”

— Barack Obama, time.com

Tagged: Dallas Shooting 2016, America 2016, Chief Brown, racism, Race Bias

“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, nytimes.com

Tagged: Black Lives Matter, protest, Movement, black lives, black lives matter organization

“They were the interchangeable faces of violence and politics.”

— Ben Okri, amazon.com

Tagged: Violence, Politics

“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…”

— Redditt Hudson, vox.com

Tagged: Police Brutality, Corruption, Black Lives Matter, racism, Technology

“A system cannot fail those it was never built to protect.”

— Vann Newkirk, time.com

Tagged: Politics, Government, Corruption, Violence, Police Brutality

“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, beyonce.com

Tagged: Freedom, Black Lives Matter, black lives, protest, Action

“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, billboard.com

Tagged: Black Lives Matter, Equality, Justice, Injustice, America

“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, medium.com

Tagged: Black Lives Matter (C1), Black Lives Matter, Justice, racism

“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 eno…”

— Hillary Clinton, medium.com

Tagged: Hillary Clinton, 2016 Election, Guns, Violence

“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, chomsky.info

Tagged: Violence, Powerful, Cruelty, Sad World, Middle East

“The system’s failure to catch killers effectively made black lives cheap.”

— Jill Leovy, amazon.com

Tagged: criminal justice, racism, America, Politics

“#AltonSterling was the 154th black person killed by police this year (to date).”

— Samuel Sinyangwe, twitter.com

Tagged: Alton Sterling, Police Killings Of Black People, Black Lives Matter

“A police officer in America faces a 1 in 1000 chance of ever facing jail time for killing another human being. #FreddieGray”

— Samuel Sinyangwe, twitter.com

Tagged: Police, racism, Freddie Gray