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      "text": "\"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.\"",
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      "text": "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.",
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      "text": "Policing is about moving from the unknown to the known and then further—to the provable.",
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      "text": "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.",
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      "text": "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.",
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      "slug": "for-police-officers",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ben-aaronovitch/the-hanging-tree/for-police-officers",
      "text": "For police officers, “close relative” frequently rhymes with “prime suspect.”",
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        "name": "Ben Aaronovitch",
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      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ben-aaronovitch/the-hanging-tree/somebodys-lying-i-said",
      "text": "“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.",
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      "slug": "after-a-slow",
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      "text": "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.",
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      "text": "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.",
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      "text": "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.",
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      "text": "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.",
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      "text": "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.",
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      "text": "Apparently he was a bit of a connoisseur, having been introduced to Verdi soon after having risen to the rank of commander. A sudden attack of culture snobbery is a common affliction among policemen of a certain rank and age; it’s like a normal midlife crisis, only with more chandeliers and foreign languages.",
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      "text": "“I’m telling you that I knew Ashu. She was like a daughter to me. There is no way she would have killed herself – and in such a way.” “The police seem quite sure,” he replied. “The police in India are like a river, Inspector Singh, always taking the path of least resistance.” Singh decided to save the metaphor for an occasion when he could use it on Superintendent Chen.",
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      "text": "\"How strange,\" continued the king, with some asperity; \"the police think that they have disposed of the whole matter when they say, 'A murder has been committed,' and especially so when they can add, 'And we are on the track of the guilty persons.'\"",
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      "text": "Martin was convinced the military police attracted self-righteous sons of bitches the way spilled sugar drew ants.",
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      "text": "Humanity many times has had sad experience of superpowerful police forces...As soon as (the police) slip out from under the firm thumb of a suspicious local tribune, they become arbitrary, merciless, a law unto themselves. They think no more of justice, but only of establishing themselves as a privileged and envied elite. They mistake the attitude of natural caution and uncertainty of the civilian population as admiration and respect, and presently they start to swagger back and forth, jingling their weapons in megalomaniac euphoria. People thereupon become not masters, but servants. Such a police force becomes merely an aggregate of uniformed criminals, the more baneful in that their position is unchallenged and sanctioned by law. The police mentality cannot regard a human being in terms other than as an item or object to be processed as expeditiously as possible. Public convenience or dignity means nothing; police prerogatives assume the status of divine law. Submissiveness is demanded. If a police officer kills a civilian, it is a regrettable circumstance: the officer was possibly overzealous. If a civilian kills a police officer all hell breaks loose. The police foam at the mouth. All other business comes to a standstill until the perpetrator of this most dastardly act is found out. Inevitably, when apprehended, he is beaten or otherwise tortured for his intolerable presumption. The police complain that they cannot function efficiently, that criminals escape them. Better a hundred unchecked criminals than the despotism of one unbridled police force.",
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      "slug": "the-police-are",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/tristes-tropiques/the-police-are",
      "text": "The police are not entrusted with a mission which differentiates them from those they serve. Being unconcerned with ultimate purposes, they are inseparable from the persons and interests of their masters, and shine with their reflected glory.",
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      "author": {
        "name": "Claude Lévi-Strauss",
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      "slug": "a-functioning-police",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-s-burroughs/naked-lunch/a-functioning-police",
      "text": "A functioning police state needs no police.",
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        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs#Naked_Lunch_(1959)",
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      "slug": "thats-the-trouble",
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      "text": "That's the trouble with living in a police state, he said to himself; you think—you imagine—the police are behind everything. You get paranoid and think they're beaming information to you in your sleep, to subliminally control you. Actually the police wouldn't do that. The police are our friends. Or was that idea beamed to me subliminally? he wondered suddenly. “The police are our friends.” The hell they are!",
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      "text": "The thing to understand is that if you are going to reform society you don't start with cops. And if you are going to reform intellect you don't start with psychiatrists. If you don't like our present social system or intellectual system the best thing you can do with either cops or psychiatrists is stay out of their way. You leave them till last.",
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