Quotes by Police Officers

It's funny how your initial approach to a person can determine your feelings toward them no matter what facts develop later on.
Dorothy Uhnak
I like to deliver more than I promise instead of the other way around.
Dorothy Uhnak
You cannot stand for civil rights + not support gay marriage. You cannot stand for human rights + not support gay marriage. It's that simple.Everywhere, the voice of the oppressed must echo + ring out or else it will be crushed by the tyranny of wickedness.
Bernard Schaffer
Never think I'm worried about losing sales by speaking out for human rights + gun control. I'd rather be broke than corrupt.
Bernard Schaffer
On Sunday mornings, as the dawn burned into day, swarms of gulls descended on the uncollected trash, hovering and dropping in the cold clear light.
Edward Conlon
Why anyone’s argument for god(s) is fallacious, especially as a causal agent:Imagine Michael and Jessica are at Jimmy’s house sitting at the kitchen table. Jessica steps outside to take a phone call. When she returns her drink is spilled. Jessica asks, “How did my drink get knocked over?” Michael replies, “It was a SnickerDoodle.”J: “What’s a SnickerDoodle?”M: “It looks a little like an elephant but it is small, pink, and invisible.”J: “Is it invisible or pink? It can’t be both.”M: “Well, it is. You can’t understand what the SnickerDoodle looks like.”J: “Zip it. SnickerDoodle’s are not real. How did my drink get knocked over?”M: “Well, it was Jimmy’s cat, but it was because he was chasing the SnickerDoodle, so the SnickerDoodle made him do it.”J: “Stop with the SnickerDoodle, you weirdo.”M: “Just kidding, it was Jimmy’s cat, I don’t know why.”We have no reason to believe that SnickerDoodle’s are real. Without SnickerDoodles being established as possible causes to drinks being knocked down, then there is no point to discussing them as the cause of Jessica’s drink being knocked over. In similar fashion, we have to establish that cats are a possible reason that drinks get knocked down. Okay, we have established that cats are real and capable of doing so. It is now a viable option, but in order for Michael’s story have any plausibility, we not only have to establish that a cat did it, we have to establish that it was Jimmy’s cat, or that Jimmy even has a cat.Believers cannot get to step one, establishing that any god is even a viable option on the list of possibilities. Then even if gods were proven to be real, you still have to prove that it was your particular god, or that your particular god exists. To argue that your god is real, is like Michael arguing that Jimmy’s SnickerDoodle knocked over Jessica’s drink. Can grown-adults take that argument seriously? Really?
Michael A. Wood Jr.
Leadership is the influence of a person(s) on another person(s) which guides their efforts in a specific direction, with more purpose, clarity, and unity than they would have held on their own.
Michael A. Wood Jr.
During voir dire, the interviews for jury selection, each person is asked under oath about their experience with the criminal justice system, as defendant or victim, but usually not even the most elementary effort is made to corroborate those claims. One ADA [Associate District Attorney] told me about inheriting a murder case, after the first jury deadlocked. He checked the raps for the jurors and found that four had criminal records. None of those jurors were prosecuted. Nor was it policy to prosecute defense witnesses who were demonstrably lying--by providing false alibis, for example--because, as another ADA told me, if they win the case, they don't bother, and if they lose, "it looks like sour grapes." A cop told me about a brawl at court one day, when he saw court officers tackle a man who tried to escape from the Grand Jury. An undercover was testifying about a buy when the juror recognized him as someone he had sold to. Another cop told me about locking up a woman for buying crack, who begged for a Desk Appearance Ticket, because she had to get back to court, for jury duty--she was the forewoman on a Narcotics case, of course. The worst part about these stories is that when I told them to various ADAs, none were at all surprised; most of those I'd worked with I respected, but the institutionalized expectations were abysmal. They were too used to losing and it showed in how they played the game.
Edward Conlon
When I had to work Shea Stadium for a Mets-Braves game – Atlanta pitcher John Rocker had recently given an interview in which he denounced New Yorkers of all Colors and preferences – I was assigned to a parking lot, where numerous drivers asked me for directions to various highways. When my first answer – “I have no idea” – seemed to invite denunciation and debate, I revised it to “Take the first left.” For all I know, those people are still lost in Queens.
Edward Conlon
The Fair Tax Equation: T=I(I(.000001))
Michael A. Wood Jr.
Even sentenced to twenty-five years in prison Ted didn’t get what he deserved. Maybe his prison mates would give it to him.
Suzie Ivy
I had received a t-shirt from my best friend Veronica at my police academy graduation. It reads, ‘Throw your donut in the opposite direction and the cops won’t get you.’ I love wearing that t-shirt.
Suzie Ivy
As a leader, I am there to make the best decisions possible with the evidence at hand and to be able to justify that decision. If it goes wrong, we add to the evidence for making the next decision, but there is no reason for regretting failure, as failure is just the production of evidence.
Michael A. Wood Jr.
I live completely without regret. Sure there are plenty of things that someone could second guess, but I see the path of life like driving down the road without a map. The thing is, some dark alleys open up in majestic places, and some bright and shiny highways to the top end in cliffs to the bottom. You never know until you get there. What I know for sure is that if many years ago I actually had a map to the path of life, the destination that I would have chosen is right here, with this family, in this place, and with these smiles. That makes anything that could have been regretful, the best decision in the world.
Michael A. Wood Jr.
What is the world coming to, when you can't trust a whore named Snake?
Edward Conlon
Good cops make their bosses look good, and Hector was a one-man beauty school.
Edward Conlon
Good cops make their bosses look good, and Hector was a one-man beauty school.
Edward Conlon
Listen, Stephen King used to write in the washroom of his trailer after his kids went to sleep. Harlan Ellison wrote in the stall of a bathroom of his barracks during boot camp. Elmore Leonard got up at 5 AM every morning to write before work.Every time my alarm goes off at 5 AM and I don’t want to get up, or I would rather sit down after work and play a videogame, I think about those guys. Take care of your family. They need you and love you. Make time for them. Then stop screwing around and finish your damn book.
Bernard Schaffer
The bulletproof vest--'bullet resistant,' technically--is made of two double panels of a synthetic material called Kevlar, inside a cloth carrier that holds it around your torso like a lead X-ray smock. One cop wrote phrases from the Bible on his, 'Yea, though I walk in the valley of the Shadow of Death...' Other cops wrote their blood type.
Edward Conlon