Top 493 Cops Quotes & Sayings

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.

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.

There's good cops and bad cops, and the good cops have to hold the bad cops accountable. We have to hold the bad cops accountable, too.

What ultimately makes 'The Wire' uplifting amid the heartbreak it conveys is its embodiment of a spirit that Barack Obama calls 'the audacity of hope.' It is filled with characters who should quit but don't, not only the boys themselves but teachers, cops, ex-cops, and ex-cons who lose their hearts to them.

People are not afraid to be very direct with police. And I think that's part of the problem is that people are angry at the cops and then the cops are stressed out and they, you know, pay it backwards, so to speak.

There's a bigger percentage of good cops than bad cops. But the bad cops should be penalised like regular people.

Most cops are not looking for understanding. They work in a world filled with a sense - real or imagined - of danger lurking around each corner and every hallway. Most cops are merely looking for respect.

I don't think the Port Authority does a good enough job in anything that they do, quite honestly, but clearly in the area of security. Those cops get paid more than N.Y.P.D. cops, and quite honestly - I know I'm going to get into trouble for saying this - they're nothing more than mall cops.

You have plenty of liberals out there who are all for the cops raiding their political enemies, they're all for the cops doing whatever they have to do to get whatever goods they want on their political enemies. And yet the Patriot Act comes, oh, you can't do it, it's an invasion of privacy. And yet in some cases they don't care about other people's privacy. Privacy is irrelevant to them depending on what the target is.

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.

Many later commented on the fact that large numbers of those engaged in the most senseless acts of destruction were left well alone by cops, indeed people dressed as Black Block members were seen freely making their way across police lines and talking to cops.

American cops are the ones who are in the emergency rooms. They're the ones who go to the morgues. They're the ones who have to go tell the families that their son is not coming back, their husband, their wife, is not coming home that night. So when we talk about guns and gun violence and police, let's understand that as well. No one wants guns off the streets more than cops because cops are killed by those guns.

When we let cops talk about themselves as a separate community, then we are letting cops wall themselves off from the rest of us. We don't generally do that with any other jobs. We don't talk about the barista community or the Wal-Mart greeter community.

There are cops who be racially profiling.

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.

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 always wondered, you know I watch "Cops" all the time - why doesn't a drug dealer design a trap door under their car? 'Cause cops don't have cameras under the cars, they get you for throwing stuff out the window! If you got a trap door under your car, boom! You would run over it. It would be genius.

I've had negative experiences with cops. I've had positive experiences with cops.

And eat lots of mints, it fools the cops.

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.

The fans are bad everywhere you go, with language, and with behavior. You can't put enough cops in the stands, but you ought to give the cops cameras, give people cameras, so they can take a picture of the idiot and you can identify him.

Anybody who speeds thinks they can outsmart the cops.

I'll be honest with you: I think that it's really difficult, this framing around 'good cops' and 'bad cops.' Policing, as a system, is incredibly corrupt, period.

There are some bad cops who are racist. There are cops that maybe don't have the right training.

While bad cops should face the full consequence of the law, the overwhelming majority of good cops have earned our support.

Why aren't there enough black cops out there? We need black cops to come in and educate some of the white cops who have issues.

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.'

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.

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.

The problem is not cop killers...it's killer cops.

My friends and I make short films. We pretended to rob the Dairy Queen where our friend worked, but someone thought we were real thieves and called the cops! Soon, the cops burst in with guns drawn!

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.

American cops didn't create that atmosphere, they're the ones though who have to live with it on a daily basis. These are generalisations; you can't make generalisations about hundreds of thousands of people. The New York Police Department, for instance, has 38,000 police officers in it. But most cops, when I talk to them, desperately care about the victims of gun violence. They see it, they experience it.

Always have two radar detectors. One to see if there are any cops around, and the second one to make sure there aren't any cops around.

When you're writing about cops from the perspective of cops, that level of sarcasm about their job and how they treat people will color the writing to a certain extent.

It's always fun to play cops and robbers.

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.

The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment; they like nothing better than love and nonviolence. The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window.

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.

The only people who distrust the cops are crooks. They're not out there just harassing innocent people. Maybe sometimes they do. But there's no inherent situation where cops are deliberately out there harassing people.

I'm not the guy to call the cops.

Only cops and vampires have to have an invitation to enter.

We need the cops, especially in the black community.

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.

I have no hatred for cops. I have hatred for racists and brutal people, but not necessarily the cops. The cops are just doing what they're told to do.

Nobody wants bad cops off the street more than good cops.

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.

The kindest compliments I have ever heard are when cops tell me Training Day and Assault on Precinct 13 inspired them to become cops. The funniest compliments I have ever heard are when people tell me that 'I love your band Sugar Ray.

I was petrified because all my friends would be going to Washington, DC, to protest. I was sixteen, and I was like, "I don't think I'll be going with you guys," just because I was scared. Then you saw the news, and cops - not students in schools with guns - cops are killing sixteen year old protesters on the news. To me that was more horrifying, to have the authority figures actually killing people on the evening news, than to have another student firing a gun.

I don't want the books to become PR exercises for the police; I want to have the freedom to write about cops who cross the line: bad cops.

If the cops didn't see it, I didn't do it!

Cops are doing crazy things now, and they catching theyselves; bodycams, carcams. But until they really start giving these cops time - 50 years, 100 years - it's not gonna stop. As long as they keep getting off, nothing's gonna happen. It's been going on since before N.W.A.

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.

My nana was a detective; my nana was a great cop. You also have bad cops that were bullied in school or whatever and think that they have power, and that makes other cops look bad.

I don't hang out with cops.

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.

It seemed to me... that the only valid people to deal with crime were cops, and I would like to make the lead character, rather than a single person, a squad of cops.

I respect and admire what cops do.

I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.

The secret to writing is just to write. Write every day. Never stop writing. Write on every surface you see; write on people on the street. When the cops come to arrest you, write on the cops. Write on the police car. Write on the judge. I'm in jail forever now, and the prison cell walls are completely covered with my writing, and I keep writing on the writing I wrote. That's my method.