When you grow up in a city like Boston, where I grew up, a lot of kids became criminals or cops. I never really had a bad take on cops other than I hate when there's one behind me on the highway.
There's a bigger percentage of good cops than bad cops. But the bad cops should be penalised like regular people.
Growing up where I'm from, some people are afraid of cops. They don't really like cops. And what a lot of people don't realize is, they're really not the bad guys. They're really on our side, they're really trying to help us out. And sometimes, we don't understand that.
You had to grow up sometime. The fellows who grew early, they were in jeopardy. They became the cops and the crooks, and the crooks became the gangsters. The crooks became the Al Capones.
I played cops and robbers and pirates and all the rest when I was a kid, but I didn't want to grow up and be an actor and play cops and robbers and pirates. I wanted to grow up and be that, be cops and robbers and pirates.
There is a thin line between the policeman and the criminal. The best cops are always crossed. The best cops are the ones who are able to think like criminals. But for a quirk of fate, they might have been criminals.
Most people have no idea what cops really do. They think cops give you a speeding ticket. They don't see the cops associating with professional criminals and making money in the process. They believe that when a guy puts on a uniform, he or she becomes virtuous. But people who go into law enforcement do so for the trill of wielding power over other people, and in this sense, they relate more to the crooks they associate with than the citizens they're supposed to protect and serve. They're looking to bully someone and they're corrupt. That's law enforcement.
I remember my first run-in with cops. It took me really getting to hang, well after that, with cops who were cool, and realizing, 'Okay, there are some bad ones.' I ran into some bad ones in Columbus, Ohio, but they're not all bad.
For the most part, cops are decent and honorable, but that's how I know that there are bad cops, cops that you think you know so well.
Nobody wants bad cops off the street more than good cops.
I had a problem with cops pulling me over all the time for speeding. When I was doing Hill Street Blues, the cops said how much they loved the show as they were writing me up; meanwhile my insurance went through the roof.
Cops in New York City don't have the best reputation. It's a fast-paced city, and they deal with a lot, and many people have seen lots of cops interact with the public utilizing what can be gently called 'not the best customer service.'
Everything in high school was reversed. If marijuana was supposed to make you mellow, I would be like, "The cops, the cops, the cops..." I was what you call the buzz kill.
I had proposed to HBO a series about the city cops in Rome at the time of Nero. What had interested me was the idea of order without law. The Praetorian Guard, who were the emperor's guards, understood how they were to proceed. But for the city cops, who were called the Urban Cohorts, there was no law at all.
We can't pick out certain incidentals that don't go our way and act like the cops are all bad... Do you know how bad some of these neighborhoods would be if it wasn't for the cops?
I would never take a case that had to do with abusing children. They're the true innocents. All of the rest of us, we have smears and stains, but they're helpless. I couldn't add my talent, which is prodigious, to a defense of someone even accused of hurting a child. I would never defend a cop - though I did on a few private cases, when cops were acting not as cops but as private citizens. Other than that, I represented everybody who came by.
I know that all cops are not sterling characters. But you have to have someone to root for. I balance it with rotten cops who will take a bribe, who will beat somebody up.