Quotes about police

"They don't worry too much if they get the wrong man," Ernest said. "They reckon whoever they get is probably guilty of something. Or would have been eventually. And if he didn't do anything, he probably wanted to."

The police department’s just another bureaucratic government agency, after all. The top brass don’t think of anything but their own careers. Some are not like that, but most of them have worked their way up playing it safe, and their goal is to find a cushy job in a related organization or private industry after they retire. So they don’t want to touch anything the least bit risky or hot. They probably don’t even eat pizza without letting it cool off.

Policing is about moving from the unknown to the known and then further—to the provable.

We headed off to do some community outreach. This involves meeting people, listening to their stories and memorizing their names and faces in case you have to come back and arrest them at a later date.

As police you can live with the violence, the squalor and the stupidity—it’s the waste of people’s futures that really grinds you down.

For police officers, “close relative” frequently rhymes with “prime suspect.”

“Somebody’s lying,” I said, which got me a look of amused indulgence from Stephanopoulos and a snort from Seawoll. Of course somebody was lying—we were the police—somebody was always lying to us.

After a slow start the police have taken to mobile technology in a big way—mainly because it means you can pretend to work anywhere: at home, the canteen, the local boozer.

It’s a police mantra that all members of the public are guilty of something, but some members of the public are more guilty than others.

I find you get two types of police, those that don’t want to know and those that do. Unfortunately, dealing with things you don’t want to know about is practically a definition of policing.

The police can live with looking corrupt, bullying, or tyrannical, but looking stupid is intolerable. It has a tendency to undermine public faith in the forces of Law and is deleterious to public order.

She had the startled rabbit look that civilians get after five minutes of helping the police with their inquiries. If they stay calm for too long it’s a sign that they’re professional villains or foreign or just plain stupid. All of which can get you locked up if you’re not careful. If you find yourself talking to the police, my advice is to stay calm but look guilty; it’s your safest bet.