Police Commissioner Quotes

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I'm not Barbara Gordon. I have to keep remembering that. Tonight, I'm not Barbara. Tonight, I'm not the Police Commissioner's daughter. Tonight, I'm the one who pored over the details of the confidential police and reports when her dad wasn't looking. I'm the one who recognized the vintage costumes you wear. Tonight? Tonight, I'm Batgirl.
Gail Simone
American citizens should not lose their constitutional rights because they lack the money to pay for them.
Bernard B. Kerik (From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054)
There is no greater threat to a free and democratic nation than a government that fails to protect its citizen’s freedom and liberty as aggressively as it pursues justice.
Bernard B. Kerik (From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054)
There is quite enough sorrow and shame and suffering and baseness in real life and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction. As Police Commissioner it was my duty to deal with all kinds of squalid misery and hideous and unspeakable infamy, and I should have been worse than a coward if I had shrunk from doing what was necessary; but there would have been no use whatever in my reading novels detailing all this misery and squalor and crime, or at least in reading them as a steady thing. Now and then there is a powerful but sad story which really is interesting and which really does good; but normally the books which do good and the books which healthy people find interesting are those which are not in the least of the sugar-candy variety, but which, while portraying foulness and suffering when they must be portrayed, yet have a joyous as well as a noble side.
Theodore Roosevelt (Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to His Children)
The two men were greedily hunched over the table, like two wolves disputing a carcass, but their muttered speech in the echoing hall resembled more the grunting of pigs. One was less than a wolf: he was a public prosecutor. The other was more than a pig, he was a chief commissioner of police.
Jan Neruda (Prague Tales (Central European Classics))
No one should ever be wrongfully deprived of their rights to liberty and freedom without just cause, yet in the past 25 years alone thousands of people have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to tens of thousands of years in prison.
Bernard B. Kerik (From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054)
Commissioner Marlowe stood on the platform with his arms crossed as we disembarked. He had the cheerful demeanor of someone who has been beaten about the face all night with a sock full of porridge--only even more so than usual.
William Ritter (Beastly Bones (Jackaby, #2))
I didn’t tell you because you’re my girlfriend, not the police commissioner. And because it really isn’t any of your business.” Carmela was taken aback for a moment. By his abruptness and his choice of words. “Your girlfriend? Is that what I am?” “I guess so,” said Babcock. He let loose a warm, throaty chuckle, then added, “Face it, we weren’t exactly playing tiddlywinks last night.” “Well, no,” said Carmela. “But girlfriend just sounds so formal.” “Friend?” suggested Babcock. “No, no,” said Carmela. “I really do prefer the former.
Laura Childs (Tragic Magic (A Scrapbooking Mystery, #7))
In a free and democratic society such as ours, justice should not eternally abrogate one’s rights to freedom and liberty, except in the most extreme cases.
Bernard B. Kerik (From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054)
We must everywhere be part of the cry for civilian review boards, not in the naive belief that they are a panacea but in the conviction that police conduct is not the exclusive responsibility of commissioners and politicians. Police must be answerable to the citizenry they presumably protect, and if they have been educated to any other concept of their role, now is the time to educate them.
Bayard Rustin (Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin)
That infamous day was the most powerful reminder I have ever been given that you should never take life for granted and should treat each day as if it's your last.
Bernard B. Kerik (From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054)
As requested by quite a mixture—the Police Commissioner and two of his deputies, the District Attorney, a bunch of inspectors and deputy inspectors, not to mention Sergeant Purley Stebbins. I’m talking from the private office of the Commissioner—you know it; you’ve been here. After these days and nights of camaraderie with them—is that the way to pronounce it?” “Almost.” “Good. I am held in high esteem by the whole shebang, from Commissioner all the way down to Lieutenant Rowcliff, which is quite a distance. Wanting to show me what they think of me, they are bestowing a great honor on me. Having a request to make of you, they are letting me make it. They’re all sitting here gazing at me so tenderly I’ve got a lump in my throat. You ought to see them.
Rex Stout (Prisoner's Base (Nero Wolfe, #21))
It is quick to over punish and uninterested in rewarding good behavior. What would we say about an individual who had these characteristics? Mean? Cruel? Heartless? Mindless? Hypocritical? Stupid?
Bernard B. Kerik (From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054)
One other thing,” Commissioner Lewis said. The detectives sank back in their seats. “I have heard officers in this command referring to the killer as the ‘Tooth Fairy.’ I don’t care what you call him among yourselves, I realize you have to call him something. But I had better not hear any police officer refer to him as the Tooth Fairy in public. It sounds flippant. Neither will you use that name on any internal memoranda.
Thomas Harris (Red Dragon (Hannibal Lecter, #1))
They live in a world that was created by somebody else, or they create a world for themselves. It can be a world of violence, a world of antisocial behavior, a world of crime. Hulan Hanna, Former Assistant Commissioner of Police with the Royal Bahamas Police Force.
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father))
The squad’s leader, Inspector Martin Roma, had been trying for two months to get the new Police Commissioner to learn more about our group. The NYPD Special Situations Squad is off the official org chart, but has been in existence in one form or another for decades. Formed to deal with the unexplainable world of the supernatural, the head of the squad always reports directly to the Commissioner. When the new mayor had swept into office last November on a platform of social issues, he had fired the old Commissioner and brought in his handpicked replacement. Said replacement hadn’t taken his Department of Homeland Security briefing on things that go bump in the night very seriously.
John Conroe (Demon Driven (Demon Accords, #2))
His instinct of a successful man had taught him long ago that, as a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement. And he felt that his manner when confronted with the telegram had not been impressive. He had opened his eyes widely, and had exclaimed 'Impossible!' exposing himself thereby to the unanswerable retort of a finger-tip laid forcibly on the telegram which the Assistant Commissioner, after reading it aloud had flung on the desk. To be crushed, as it were, under the tip of a forefinger was an unpleasant experience. Very damaging too! Furthermore, Chief Inspector Heat was conscious of not having mended matters by allowing himself to express a conviction. 'One thing I can tell you at once: none of our lot had anything to do with this.' He was strong in his integrity of a good detective, but he saw now that an impenetrably attentive reserve towards this incident would have served his reputation better. On the other hand, he admitted to himself that it was difficult to preserve one's reputation if rank outsiders were going to take a hand in the business. Outsiders are the bane of the police as of other professions.
Joseph Conrad (The Secret Agent)
The Chicago Commission on Race Relations found evidence of systemic profiling, abuse, and corruption. Officials testified that officers routinely arrested blacks on suspicion and brought them “into court without a bit of evidence of any offense.” A former chief of police admitted that black migrants “naturally” attracted “greater suspicion than would attach to the white man.” Such startling testimony proved that police bias and discrimination were baked into the arrest statistics, leading the commissioners to abandon
Khalil Gibran Muhammad (The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, With a New Preface)
For the poverty in which my mother and father lived, for the failure of the mill, all the hard times, for the awful sheep, for constant tiredness, thank you, my God! For lips, which I was feeding too much, for the dirty noses of the children, for the guarded sheep, I thank you! Thank you, my God, for the prosecutor and the police commissioner, for the policemen, and for the harsh words of Father Peyramale! For the days in which you came, Mary, for the ones in which you did not come, I will never be able to thank you…only in Paradise. For the slap in the face, for the ridicule, the insults, and for those who suspected me for wanting to gain something from it, thank you, my Lady. For my spelling, which I never learned, for the memory that I never had, for my ignorance and for my stupidity, thank you. For the fact that my mother died so far away, for the pain I felt when my father instead of hugging his little Bernadette called me, “Sister Marie-Bernard”, I thank you, Jesus. I thank you for the heart you gave me, so delicate and sensitive, which you filled with bitterness. For the fact that Mother Josephine proclaimed that I was good for nothing, thank you. For the sarcasm of the Mother Superior: her harsh voice, her injustices, her irony and for the bread of humiliation, thank you. Thank you that I was the privileged one when it came to be reprimanded, so that my sisters said, “How lucky it is not to be Bernadette.” Thank you for the fact that it is me, who was the Bernadette threatened with imprisonment because she had seen you, Holy Virgin; regarded by people as a rare animal; that Bernadette so wretched, that upon seeing her, it was said, “Is that it?” For this miserable body which you gave me, for this burning and suffocating illness, for my decaying tissues, for my de-calcified bones, for my sweats, for my fever, for my dullness and for my acute pains, thank you, my God. And for this soul which you have given me, for the desert of inner dryness, for your night and your lightening, for your silences and your thunders, for everything. For you - when you were present and when you were not—thank you, Jesus.
Bernadette Soubirous
One of the most effective remedies against urban anarchy over the past two decades is under attack. Proactive policing—also called Broken Windows policing—calls for the enforcement of low-level misdemeanor laws regulating public order. Manhattan Institute fellow George Kelling and Harvard professor James Q. Wilson first articulated the Broken Windows theory in 1982 as a means of quelling public fear of crime and restoring order to fraying communities. William Bratton embraced the thinking in his first tour as commissioner of the New York Police Department in the 1990s, with great benefit to public safety.
Heather Mac Donald (The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe)
If the official criteria established by the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police for defining the term “prostitute” is applied to Polly, Annie, and Kate, it immediately becomes obvious that they cannot be identified as such. Even when relying on inquest testimony, there exists no proof to support these assertions. Similarly, there is no absolute proof that Elisabeth Stride returned to prostitution in the period prior to her murder. Quite simply, there is no evidence that any of these women self-identified as prostitutes and no evidence that anyone among their community regarded them as part of the sex trade.
Hallie Rubenhold (The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper)
On the second to last day, Lt. Russo, who ran the program, announced, "Unless you were at dinner last night and had the opportunity to say 'Howard, pass the salt,' you are going to Brooklyn North and Manhattan North. That's where they need people, and that's where you're going." "Howard" referred to to the Commissioner Safir, and when they read the list of assignments the next afternoon-- "Alvarez... Brooklyn North..." "Baker... Brooklyn North..." "Buono... Manhattan North..." "Calderon... Brooklyn North..." "Conlon... South Bronx Initiative..." --more than a few people turned around to look. Howard, pass the salt. I was a little surprised myself.
Edward Conlon (Blue Blood by Conlon, Edward (2004) Paperback)
we have much to learn from the struggles in Alabama and Mississippi in the early 1960s. In the spring of 1963 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. King launched a “fill the jails” campaign to desegregate downtown department stores and schools in Birmingham. But few local blacks were coming forward. Black adults were afraid of losing their jobs, local black preachers were reluctant to accept the leadership of an “Outsider,” and city police commissioner Bull Connor had everyone intimidated. Facing a major defeat, King was persuaded by his aide, James Bevel, to allow any child old enough to belong to a church to march. So on D-day, May 2, before the eyes of the whole nation, thousands of schoolchildren, many of them first graders, joined the movement and were beaten, fire-hosed, attacked by police dogs, and herded off to jail in paddy wagons and school buses. The result was what has been called the “Children’s Miracle.” Inspired and shamed into action, thousands of adults rushed to join the movement. All over the country rallies were called to express outrage against Bull Connor’s brutality. Locally, the power structure was forced to desegregate lunch counters and dressing rooms in downtown stores, hire blacks to work downtown, and begin desegregating the schools. Nationally, the Kennedy administration, which had been trying not to alienate white Dixiecrat voters, was forced to begin drafting civil rights legislation as the only way to forestall more Birminghams. The next year as part of Mississippi Freedom Summer, activists created Freedom Schools because the existing school system (like ours today) had been organized to produce subjects, not citizens. People in the community, both children and adults, needed to be empowered to exercise their civil and voting rights. A mental revolution was needed. To bring it about, reading, writing, and speaking skills were taught through discussions of black history, the power structure, and building a movement. Everyone took this revolutionary civics course, then chose from more academic subjects such as algebra and chemistry. All over Mississippi, in church basements and parish halls, on shady lawns and in abandoned buildings, volunteer teachers empowered thousands of children and adults through this community curriculum. The Freedom Schools of 1964 demonstrated that when Education involves young people in making community changes that matter to them, when it gives meaning to their lives in the present instead of preparing them only to make a living in the future, young people begin to believe in themselves and to dream of the future.
Grace Lee Boggs (The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century)
He had been a timid child in New York City, cut off from schoolboy society by illness, wealth, and private tutors. Inspired by a leonine father, he had labored with weights to build up his strength. Simultaneously, he had built up his courage “by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness.” With every ounce of new muscle, with every point scored over pugilistic, romantic, and political rivals, his personal impetus (likened by many observers to that of a steam train) had accelerated. Experiences had flashed by him in such number that he was obviously destined to travel a larger landscape of life than were his fellows. He had been a published author at eighteen, a husband at twenty-two, an acclaimed historian and New York State Assemblyman at twenty-three, a father and a widower at twenty-five, a ranchman at twenty-six, a candidate for Mayor of New York at twenty-seven, a husband again at twenty-eight, a Civil Service Commissioner of the United States at thirty. By then he was producing book after book, and child after child, and cultivating every scientist, politician, artist, and intellectual of repute in Washington. His career had gathered further speed: Police Commissioner of New York City at thirty-six, Assistant Secretary of the Navy at thirty-eight, Colonel of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, the “Rough Riders,” at thirty-nine. At last, in Cuba, had come the consummating “crowded hour.” A rush, a roar, the sting of his own blood, a surge toward the sky, a smoking pistol in his hand, a soldier in light blue doubling up “neatly as a jackrabbit” … When the smoke cleared, he had found himself atop Kettle Hill on the Heights of San Juan, with a vanquished empire at his feet.
Edmund Morris (Theodore Rex)
You will make a very good Chief Magistrate, I think.” Shock swept over him that he fought mightily to disguise. So she knew of that, did she? “I’m only one of several possible candidates, madam. You do me great honor to assume I’ll be chosen.” “Masters tells me that the appointment is all but settled.” “Then Masters knows more than I do on the subject.” “And more than my granddaughter as well,” she said. His stomach knotted. Damn Mrs. Plumtree and her machinations. “But I’m sure you took great pains to inform her of it.” The woman hesitated, then gripped the head of her cane with both hands. “I thought she should have all the facts before she threw herself into a misalliance.” Hell and blazes. And Mrs. Plumtree had probably implied that a rich wife would advance his career. He could easily guess how Celia would respond to hearing that, especially after he’d fallen on her with all the subtlety of an ox in rut. His temper swelled. Although he’d suspected that Mrs. Plumtree wouldn’t approve of him for her granddaughter, some part of him had thought that his service to the family-and the woman’s own humble beginnings-might keep her from behaving predictably. He should have known better. “No doubt she was grateful for the information.” After all, it gave Celia just the excuse she needed to continue in her march to marry a great lord. “She claimed that there was nothing between you and her.” “She’s right.” There never had been. He’d been a fool to think there could me. “I am glad to hear it.” Her sidelong glance was filled with calculation. “Because if you play your cards right, you have an even better prospect before you than that of Chief Magistrate.” He froze. “What do you mean?” “You may not be aware of this, but one of my friends is the Home Secretary, Robert Peel. Your superior.” “I’m well aware who my superior is.” “It seems he wishes to establish a police force,” she went on. “He is fairly certain that it will come to pass eventually. When it does, he will appoint a commissioner to oversee the entire force in London.” She cast him a hard stare. “You could be that man.” Jackson fought to hide his surprise. He’d heard rumors of Peel’s plans, of course, but hadn’t realized that they’d progressed so far. Or that she was privy to them. Then it dawned on him why she was telling him this. “You mean, I could be that man if I leave your granddaughter alone.
Sabrina Jeffries (A Lady Never Surrenders (Hellions of Halstead Hall, #5))
British / Pakistani ISIS suspect, Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, is arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of recruiting jihadists to fight in Syria • Local police named arrested Briton as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, also known as Zak, living in 70 Eversleigh Road, Westham, E6 1HQ London • They suspect him of recruiting militants for ISIS in two Bangladeshi cities • He arrived in the country in February, having previously spent time in Syria and Pakistan • Suspected militant recruiter also recently visited Australia A forty year old Muslim British man has been arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of recruiting would-be jihadists to fight for Islamic State terrorists in Syria and Iraq. The man, who police named as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood born 24th August 1977, also known as Zak, is understood to be of Pakistani origin and was arrested near the Kamalapur Railway area of the capital city Dhaka. He is also suspected of having attempted to recruit militants in the northern city of Sylhet - where he is understood to have friends he knows from living in Newham, London - having reportedly first arrived in the country about six months ago to scout for potential extremists. Militants: The British Pakistani man (sitting on the left) named as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood was arrested in Bangladesh. The arrested man has been identified as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, sources at the media wing of Dhaka Metropolitan Police told local newspapers. He is believed to have arrived in Bangladesh in February and used social media websites including Facebook to sound out local men about their interest in joining ISIS, according Monirul Islam - joint commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police - who was speaking at a press briefing today. Zakaria has openly shared Islamist extremist materials on his Facebook and other social media links. An example of Zakaria Saqib Mahmood sharing Islamist materials on his Facebook profile He targeted Muslims from Pakistan as well as Bangladesh, Mr Islam added, before saying: 'He also went to Australia but we are yet to know the reason behind his trips'. Zakaria saqib Mahmood trip to Australia in order to recruit for militant extremist groups 'From his passport we came to know that he went to Pakistan where we believe he met a Jihadist named Rauf Salman, in addition to Australia during September last year to meet some of his links he recruited in London, mainly from his weekly charity food stand in East London, ' the DMP spokesperson went on to say. Police believes Zakaria Mahmood has met Jihadist member Rauf Salman in Pakistan Zakaria Saqib Mahmood was identified by the local police in Pakistan in the last September. The number of extremists he has met in this trip remains unknown yet. Zakaria Saqib Mahmood uses charity food stand as a cover to radicalise local people in Newham, London. Investigators: Dhaka Metropolitan Police believe Zakaria Saqib Mhamood arrived in Bangladesh in February and used social media websites including Facebook to sound out local men about their interest in joining ISIS The news comes just days after a 40-year-old East London bogus college owner called Sinclair Adamson - who also had links to the northern city of Sylhet - was arrested in Dhaka on suspicion of recruiting would-be fighters for ISIS. Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, who has studied at CASS Business School, was arrested in Dhaka on Thursday after being reported for recruiting militants. Just one day before Zakaria Mahmood's arrest, local police detained Asif Adnan, 26, and Fazle ElahiTanzil, 24, who were allegedly travelling to join ISIS militants in Syria, assisted by an unnamed Briton. It is understood the suspected would-be jihadists were planning to travel to a Turkish airport popular with tourists, before travelling by road to the Syrian border and then slipping across into the warzone.
Zakaria Zaqib Mahmood
Detroit, for example, a new police commissioner took over in 1971 and began implementing a more Nixonian approach to illicit drugs. Chief John Nichols doubled up the personnel on his narcotics unit and started arresting and imprisoning heroin dealers instead of merely chasing them off, as the city had done in the past. The result was an impressive stat sheet on the enforcement side: 1,600 arrests. But cracking down on dealers opened the city up to turf wars. In one ten-day stretch in June, Detroit logged forty murders.28 It was one of the first examples of the sort of self-perpetuating, self-escalating feedback loop created by the modern drug war. Crackdowns upset the established black markets.
Radley Balko (Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces)
The CHP commissioner uttered those words before kicking off a five-hour meeting to talk about mental-health training for police. More then 100 experts and advocates, lawmakers and legislative staff, public health officials, family members and police officers from around the state gathered at the patrol’s North Sacramento headquarters.
Anonymous
THE CITY has spent $22.9 million in police overtime to handle protests over cop brutality, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton revealed Monday.
Anonymous
I believed removing Saddam from power was the right thing to do at the time, and I was also motivated by 9/11. Weapons of mass destruction or not, Saddam had murdered and displaced millions of his own countrymen and was funding suicidal terror operations against the state of Israel…
Bernard B. Kerik (From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054)
To the left and at the end of our small wing that held eight prisoners was an NYPD officer named Gilberto Valle, who’d been charged with conspiring to cook and eat his girlfriend. The press had dubbed him the “Cannibal Cop.
Bernard B. Kerik (From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054)
The automobile industry began a campaign to popularize the use of the word “jaywalking” (walking like a “jay,” or rube), a term so derogatory that when it was used in 1915 by New York’s police commissioner, The Times responded with an editorial criticizing the “truly shocking” and “highly opprobrious” slur.
Anonymous
It smelled like a slaughterhouse. I was standing in the interrogation room of Saddam Hussein's Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad. A stench of blood and death permeated my senses, my clothes, my being.
Bernard B. Kerik (From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054)
Not even when it had my name did I really think about what it would be like to pass days and months and years in those boxes, to be on the other side of the treatment,
Bernard B. Kerik (From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054)
People can say that I became famous because of 911. I became America's top cop, cultivated a political profile, wrote books, became a security consultant. But I'd give anything for that day not to have happened. I wish it hadn't. But it did. And I happen to be there at the time. I was there, and I did the best I could do under the circumstances. It's all any of us did.
Bernard B. Kerik (From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054)
A person who takes a gun holds it to somebody’s head, and intimidates them for money or take their property from them. The person who gets into an argument and his only resort is to take a gun or some offensive weapon and eliminate the other person. I understand that many of these persons do not have reasoning skills. They do not have the basic conflict management skills, to resolve basic issues between themselves and others. So they resort to what they know best, which is violence. I’m talking about the animalistic instinct. Former Assistant Commissioner of Police with the Royal Bahamas Police Force, Mr. Hulan Hanna.
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father))
There were times in meeting I was called a baby sitter, a social worker by my colleagues. Now that we have a different leader, he looks at it the way I look at it, and he supported me in what I was doing. There were times he saw me crying, and he would comfort me and say that’s okay. Commissioner Paul Farquharson was one of my biggest supporters. It used to hurt me, because I was trying to help somebody and they say I was babysitting. Don’t tell me I am babysitting, now that I have retired now I am babysitting. So not because I was trying to reach out and work with those children, don’t say I was babysitting them. I work the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for 22 years and I was rough in CID. I realize CID was the end result, because whenever you get to that stage you are almost finished. It is in line with the broken window theory, if you can save those youngsters before they start committing those big offenses, then they wouldn’t reach CID. Crime prevention was a part of my job, I believe in going out there and trying to prevent that youngster from committing crime. He should respect other people’s property. Supt. Allerdyce Strachan, the first female officer to rise to the rank of superintendent on the Royal Bahamas Police Force.
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father))
What do citizens expect of government agencies entrusted with crime control, risk control, or other harm reduction duties? The public does not expect that governments will be able to prevent all crimes or contain all harms. But they do expect government agencies to provide the best protection possible, and at a reasonable price, by being:           Vigilant, so they can spot emerging threats early, pick up on precursors and warning signs, use their imaginations to work out what could happen, use their intelligence systems to discover what others are planning, and do all this before much harm is done.           Nimble, flexible enough to organize themselves quickly and appropriately around each emerging crime pattern rather than being locked into routines and processes designed for traditional issues.           Skillful, masters of the entire intervention tool kit, experienced (as craftsmen) in picking the best tools for each task, and adept at inventing new approaches when existing methods turn out to be irrelevant or insufficient to suppress an emerging threat.8 Real success in crime control—spotting emerging crime problems early and suppressing them before they do much harm—would not produce substantial year-to-year reductions in crime figures, because genuine and substantial reductions are available only when crime problems have first grown out of control. Neither would best practices produce enormous numbers of arrests, coercive interventions, or any other specific activity, because skill demands economy in the use of force and financial resources and rests on artful and well-tailored responses rather than extensive and costly campaigns. Ironically, therefore, the two classes of metrics that still seem to wield the most influence in many departments—crime reduction and enforcement productivity—would utterly fail to reflect the very best performance in crime control. Further, we must take seriously the fact that other important duties of the police will never be captured through crime statistics or in measures of enforcement output. As NYPD Assistant Commissioner Ronald J. Wilhelmy wrote in a November 2013 internal NYPD strategy document:
Malcolm K. Sparrow (Handcuffed: What Holds Policing Back, and the Keys to Reform)
I could have told her that I was quite convinced, and that she would be, too, if she talked to Samantha for five minutes. But when Deborah makes up her mind, it takes a written order from the police commissioner to change it, and I didn’t think there was one in the works.
Jeff Lindsay (Dexter is Delicious (Dexter, #5))
Commissioner Lüdtke was right that the killer was aware of the police activity and changed his own actions based on it, but Lüdtke should have given more consideration to the possibility that his ploy would result in the killer striking again. And in a way that resulted not in him being caught, but in a woman dying.
Scott Andrew Selby (A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin: The Chilling True Story of the S-Bahn Murderer)
The NYPD’s Intelligence Division had grown out of the New York City terror attack of September 11, 2001. After being rehired as police commissioner four months later, Ray Kelly determined that federal law enforcement communities had failed New York. He could not understand how every law enforcement and security agency missed a plot involving dozens of people taking flying lessons, crossing borders, shipping money all over the place. Nobody was going to take care of New York, he realized, except New York’s Finest themselves.
Dick Wolf (The Intercept (Jeremy Fisk, #1))
Memos descended fairly regularly from the Commissioner’s office, and they usually concealed an agenda. “Restructuring” was a current buzzword, having replaced “efficiency” and “skills development,” terms that had been the subject of the last two reports that the Department of Sensitive Crimes had been requested to submit. Each of these reports had taken two months to write and had disappeared into the maw of the police department without any sign of ever having been read by anybody. That was almost always the case with departmental reports, Ulf thought: People wrote them and submitted them. They then sat unread on several high-level desks before they were removed for filing. So it was, he suspected, throughout bureaucracies everywhere: people filled in forms and wrote reports that were rarely scrutinised and almost never led to anything happening in the real world.
Alexander McCall Smith (The Talented Mr. Varg (Detective Varg, #2))
If you took a poll, few people in town could tell you who the mayor was, or the police chief, or the city manager. Hardly anybody could tell you the name of a city councilman, or a county commissioner, or the head of the public works department, or the planning department, or the fire department. Those were jobs nobody cared about in Odessa unless a house burned down or a sewer line backed up. But just about everybody could tell you who the coach of Permian High School was, and that rubbed off on her.
H.G. Bissinger (Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream)
Mayor Bill Thompson was vacationing in Wyoming, and he’d insisted on bringing Police Commissioner John Garrity with him, leaving Chicago without its top law enforcement official when the riot exploded.
Simon Balto (Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power)
man armed with a revolver opened fire at Hip Sing headquarters, which was then located at 49 Hudson Street. More than two dozen Hip Sing members dove to the floor and tried to take cover. Two men fell down some cement steps as they scrambled to get out of the way. Miraculously, no one was hit. The lone gunman, believed to be a member of the On Leong, escaped. Later that evening, Police Commissioner Eugene C. Hultman and Superintendent Michael H. Crowley paid a visit to Chinatown. They brought signs with them with the following message written in Chinese: Th
Emily Sweeney (Gangland Boston: A Tour Through the Deadly Streets of Organized Crime)
By 1937, Charlestown’s civic leaders were fed up with the practice, which had blighted the Town’s reputation. A committee demanded that the Police Commissioner end looping “at all costs.” Late that year, authorities announced that any captured looper would be publicly flogged on a platform in City Square. The plan was never implemented, but increased police surveillance led to the arrest of seventy-seven loopers in 1937 alone. The next March, Mayor Maurice Tobin ordered Bunker Hill Street dug up at three locations to create “bottlenecks” slightly wider than an automobile wheel base and filled with low concrete pyramids. If these traps weren’t negotiated at low speeds the pyramids would rupture the car’s undercarriage.
J. Anthony Lukas (Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (Pulitzer Prize Winner))
The typical department was shaped by its organizational culture more than by statutes, regulations or the lofty pronouncements of the mayor or the police commissioner. If officer A saw officer B struggling with someone on the street, he was expected to jump in and help his colleague without question. Anyone who failed to do so would thereafter be scorned by his peers. Informers too were despised, particularly in Irish-dominated forces with a folk memory of British spies in the old country. A cop who was labeled a coward or a stool pigeon would become an outcast.
Thomas A. Reppetto (American Police, A History: 1945-2012: The Blue Parade, Vol. II)
We must work—in the words of New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton—to really see each other. Perhaps the reason we struggle as a nation is because we’ve come to see only what we represent, at face value, instead of who we are. We simply must see the people we serve.
Historica Press (DIRECTOR COMEY – IN HIS OWN WORDS: A Collection of His Most Important Speeches as FBI Director)
One thing I remember with amazement about Chicago is that everyone knew everything before it was splayed lurid and naked in public; you never saw a city so filled with knowing as Chicago then and probably now; but for all the sure knowledge that the mayor was a thief of epic proportion and the state senator on the take, the police commissioner a thug and the cardinal a man with a mistress, I do not remember that anyone was in the least resigned or cowed; it was more like you knew the score and worked around it, you assumed the worst but sought out and esteemed the best where you found it.
Brian Doyle
In 1949-1950, a movie based on a true story was made “Wer fuhr den grauen Ford?” “Who drove the gray Ford” with Otto Wernicke playing the part of Criminal Commissioner Thieme. In the plot, a robbery of 240,000 Marks is perfectly planned and carried out with the help of a stolen gray Ford. Police Commissioner Thieme and his assistant, search for the loot in the dark without success. Then one of the robbers in a moment of conscience commits a fatal mistake by sending his share of the loot to the police. This mailing provides Commissioner Thieme with enough clues to capture the robbers.
Hank Bracker
federal government to protect it from foreign terrorist attacks. That lesson caused him to create a global intelligence division and a counterterrorism force. The audacity of the idea was breathtaking—a local police force with a worldwide perspective that could unearth terrorist plots wherever conceived and prevent them from reaching New York City. When Kelly proposed hiring a deputy commissioner for counterterrorism and another for a reconceived intelligence unit, Bloomberg approved it. “The world no longer stops at the oceans,” the mayor said at the time. “We have to make sure we get the best information as quickly as we possibly can,” he asserted. It was the same concept—accurate information delivered in real time to people making important, complex decisions—that had been the basis for Bloomberg’s global business. Kelly had little trouble convincing his boss of the need, or the viability of the bold idea, even though at the time he had not yet developed a detailed plan.15 Kelly rapidly changed the status of the NYPD on the Joint Task Force on Terrorism that the FBI had been running in New York City since 1980. He named retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Frank Libutti the first NYPD deputy commissioner for counterterrorism, and he increased the number of NYPD detectives assigned to the group from twenty to more
Chris McNickle (Bloomberg: A Billionaire's Ambition)
Some former Bush officials, however, believed that the Justice Department's failure to pursue the New Black Panther Party case resulted from top Obama administration officials' ideological belief that civil rights laws only apply to protect members of minority groups from discrimination by whites. Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler denied any such motives. She asserted that "the department makes enforcement decisions based on the merits, not the race, gender or ethnicity of any party involved". But an anonymous Justice Department official told the Washington Post that "the Voting Rights Act was passed because people like Bull Connor [a white police commissioner] were hitting people like John Lewis [a black civil rights activist], not the other way around". The Post concluded that the New Black Panther Party case "tapped into deep divisions within the Justice Department that persist today over whether the agency should focus on protecting historically oppressed minorities or enforce laws without regard to race". The Office of Professional Responsibility's report on the case found that several former and current DOJ attorneys told investigators under oath that some lawyers in the Civil Rights Division don't believe that the DOJ should bring cases involving white victims of racial discrimination. The report also found that Voting Section lawyers believed that their boss, appointed by President Obama, wanted them to bring only cases protecting members of American minority groups. She phrased this as having the section pursue only "traditional" civil rights enforcement cases. Her employees understood that by "traditional" she meant only cases involving minority victims.
David E. Bernstein (Lawless: The Obama Administration's Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law)
[Former Detroit Police Commissioner George Edwards, then a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit], wrote in November 1965: 'Although local police forces generally regard themselves as public servants with the responsibility of maintaining law and order, they tend to minimize this attitude when they are patrolling areas that are heavily populated with Negro citizens. There, they tend to view each person on the streets as a potential criminal or enemy, and all too often this attitude is reciprocated. Indeed the hostility between Negro communities in our large cities and the police departments is the major problem in law enforcement in this decade.
B.J. Widick (Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence)
When he’d represented Roxbury’s Ward 14 in the statehouse, John Collins had felt powerless to compete with suburban legislators and lobbyists. Boston’s elected officials could not raise taxes or even appoint a new police commissioner without the approval of legislators from neighboring cities and towns, and Boston’s legislators rarely got the better of their suburban counterparts. Boston’s Finance Commission — to take only one example — was funded through city taxes but the governor appointed all of its members.
Lawrence Harmon (The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions)
In early 1962, he defended his friend and loyal supporter, Boston Police Commissioner Leo Sullivan and his beloved Boston policemen in the face of the embarrassing television evidence of the Key Shop Bookie operation which showed Boston policemen entering the shop during book-making hours.
Joseph Dever (Cushing of Boston: A Candid Portrait)
Typically, a constable only sits in the Commissioner’s anteroom when he’s been very brave or very stupid, and I really couldn’t tell which one applied to me.
Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London (Rivers of London, #1))
The initiatory step of the policy subsequently developed was found in one sentence: "Therefore, all manufacturers of arms and munitions of war are hereby requested to report to me forthwith, so that the lawfulness of their occupations may be known and understood, and all misconstruction of their doings avoided." There soon followed a demand for the surrender of the arms stored by the city authorities in a warehouse. The police refused to surrender them without the orders of the police commissioners. The police commissioners, upon representation that the demand of General Butler was by order of the President, decided to surrender the arms under protest, and they were accordingly removed to Fort McHenry. Baltimore was now disarmed.
Jefferson Davis (The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government)
Roosevelt was a brilliant, vociferous, combustible man, not the type who ordinarily reaches the presidency. In his whirlwind career, which had taken him from college to the White House in less than twenty years, he had been many things: a historian, lawyer, ornithologist, minority leader of the New York State Assembly, boxer, ranchman, New York City police commissioner, naturalist, hunter, civil service reformer, prolific author, devoted husband and father, voracious reader, assistant secretary of the navy, war hero, empire builder, advocate of vigorous physical exercise, governor of New York, and vice president of the United States. He was a big, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested man, with tan, rough-textured skin. His hair was close-cropped and reddish-brown in color, with bristles around the temples beginning to show gray, and his almost impossibly muscular neck looked as if it was on the verge of bursting his collar-stays. He wore pince-nez spectacles with a ribbon that hung down the left side of his face. When he smiled or spoke, he revealed two very straight rows of teeth, plainly visible from incisor to incisor, their gleaming whiteness sharply accented by his ruddy complexion.
Ian W. Toll (Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941–1942)
Troublingly, the various reports disseminated by the FBI were often misleading if not outright inaccurate. In one teletype sent to the director of the Domestic Intelligence Division of the FBI, as well as to the White House and the U.S. attorney general, at 11:58 p.m. on September 9, the Buffalo office reported that during the riot “the whites were reportedly forced into the yard area by the blacks” and Black Power militants there were rounding up not just employee hostages but also all white prisoners, which was misleading in that it suggested a race riot was unfolding.42 More inflammatory still, the FBI’s Buffalo office stated that the prisoners “have threatened to kill one guard for every shot fired [at them]”; that they “have threatened to kill all hostages unless demands are met”; and that all of the hostages “are being made to stand at attention” out in D Yard.43 None of this proved to be the case. During the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s the FBI was deeply invested in destabilizing and undermining grassroots organizations that it considered a threat to national security—as were the politicians, such as Nixon, Agnew, and Mitchell, who supported its efforts and relied on its briefings.44 One of the FBI’s counterintelligence programs in this period—COINTELPRO—was notorious for using rumor and outright fabrication stories in an attempt to destroy leftist, antiwar, and civil rights groups from within. For this reason Commissioner Oswald’s determination to keep negotiating with the men in D Yard infuriated much of the Bureau. As one internal FBI memo put it, state officials had “capitulated to the unreasonable demands of prisoners.”45 And these weren’t just any criminals; as the FBI noted on multiple occasions, “The majority of the mutinous prisoners are black.”46 As dusk fell over D Yard on the first day of the Attica uprising, FBI and State Police rumors about black prisoners’ threats and outrageous actions only multiplied. But no matter how hostile everyone else was to the idea of the state negotiating with the prisoners, Commissioner Russell Oswald insisted even more forcefully that he was going to see these talks through.
Heather Ann Thompson (Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy)
During my first term as NYPD commissioner, Sharpton had functioned largely as a sharp-tongued publicity-seeking political gadfly,
Bill Bratton (The Profession: A Memoir of Policing in America)
but for all the sure knowledge that the mayor was a thief of epic proportion and the state senator on the take, the police commissioner a thug and the cardinal a man with a mistress, I do not remember that anyone was in the least resigned or cowed; it was more like you knew the score and worked around it, you assumed the worst but sought out and esteemed the best where you found it; and that was, as far as I could tell, on your street, in your neighborhood, among the shopkeepers and cops and nuns and bus drivers and carpenters and teachers who composed the small vibrant villages that collectively were the real Chicago.
Brian Doyle (Chicago)
He suggested that all lieutenants, captains, and inspectors be fit to walk ten miles a day on three consecutive days, or in some cases that they ride thirty miles a day for the same period. Fourteen years later, as Mayor La Guardia went on the radio to read "Dick Tracy" to "the kiddies" during a newspaper strike, he offered an aside to Police Commissioner Lewis Valentine, wondering why Dick Tracy was slim and trim and so many New York police detectives were fat.
H. Paul Jeffers (The Napoleon of New York: Mayor Fiorello La Guardia)
In 1956, with no leads and public outcry mounting, the police turned to James A. Brussel, a psychiatrist and criminologist and the assistant commissioner of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, who lived with his wife on the grounds of Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens. Brussel examined the letters from the bomber and the crime scene photos and came up with a “portrait” of the bomber—the very first case of criminal profiling ever. Among his many predictions: that when he was found, the bomber would be wearing a double-breasted suit, buttoned.
Fiona Davis (The Spectacular)
and was quite happy to let people get on with their jobs without his breathing down their necks. Privately, he and his family led a model life. He helped with Swedish-adjustment classes for refugees, while his wife, Anita, was an accountant who voluntarily did the accounts of two local charities. Their two clear-eyed sons had co-founded an aero-modelling club for disadvantaged youths. They were well liked in the suburb in which they lived, where very few, if any, people knew that their mild and rather pleasant neighbour was in fact the Commissioner of Police.
Alexander McCall Smith (The Department of Sensitive Crimes (Detective Varg #1))
When parents are oppressive, as so often they are, we as children are largely powerless to do anything about it; our choices are limited. But as adults, when we are physically healthy, our choices are almost unlimited. That does not mean they are not painful. Frequently our choices lie between the lesser of two evils, but it is still within our power to make these choices. Yes, I agree with my acquaintance, there are indeed oppressive forces at work within the world. We have, however, the freedom to choose every step of the way the manner in which we are going to respond to and deal with these forces. It is his choice to live in an area of the country where the police don’t like “long-haired types” and still grow his hair long. He has the freedom to move to the city, or to cut his hair, or even to wage a campaign for the office of police commissioner. But despite his brilliance, he does not acknowledge these freedoms. He chooses to lament his lack of political power instead of accepting and exulting in his immense personal power. He speaks of his love of freedom and of the oppressive forces that thwart it, but every time he speaks of how he is victimized by these forces he actually is giving away his freedom. I hope that some day soon he will stop resenting life simply because some of its choices are painful.3
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
Bloomberg allowed Commissioner Kelly a lot of autonomy to make law enforcement decisions. There’s good reason for this: operational choices and even strategic plans are better when they’re based on objective conditions and free of politics.
Bill Bratton (The Profession: A Memoir of Policing in America)
He panned the streams for gold. Some winters he stayed with John Evans at Trevelin and swapped dirty nuggets for flour. He was a crack shot. He shot trout from the rivers; a cigarette packet from the police commissioner’s mouth; and had the habit of picking off ladies’ high-heels.
Bruce Chatwin (In Patagonia)
Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William Bratton announced that all New York Police Department (NYPD) officers would undergo additional use-of-force training so that they could make arrests in the future in ways that were less likely to result in serious injury, as well as training in methods to de-escalate conflicts and more effectively communicate with the public. Such training ignores two important factors in Garner’s death. The first is the officers’ casual disregard for his well-being, ignoring his cries of “I can’t breathe,” and their seeming indifferent reaction to his near lifelessness while awaiting an ambulance. This is a problem of values and seems to go to the heart of the claim that, for too many police, black lives don’t matter.
Alex S. Vitale (The End of Policing)
Since 2008, the police chief in Milwaukee has been Edward Flynn, who is sixty-six years old and a longtime ally of New York’s police commissioner, William Bratton. Like Bratton, he relies on crime data to direct officers to the most dangerous neighborhoods. “The reality for urban police practitioners is that we respond to the overwhelming victimization of black people,” Flynn told me. “Every community meeting I go to in an African-American neighborhood is fuelled by demands for more effective police services. The sad fact is that most violent offenders look like their victims. So that means everything we do is going to have a disparate impact on communities of color.
Anonymous
I had no idea what “mira” meant. But the boy was holding a baseball bat in a distinctly threatening manner, and I understood immediately what was happening to us. We were being robbed. Damned if I can remember my friend’s name, but we were two white kids in the park. The other boys were Puerto Rican. Our patch of the city was still teeming with thousands of white ethnic families like the Kellys—Irish, Jews, Italians, assorted eastern and northern Europeans, all living on top of each other. But the neighborhood was just getting its first wave of Puerto Ricans. Even an eight-year-old could sense fresh tension on the sidewalks and in the parks. No one flashed a knife or a gun that day. The baseball bat was more than enough to grab my attention. One of the older boys reached his hands around my neck and started squeezing. I could feel other hands reaching into my pockets. I had no money. No one had cell phones or other electronic devices back then. As I gasped for oxygen and my eyes began to bulge, I stole a glance at my friend, who looked just as terrified as I was. The boys were rifling through his pockets too. The next thing I heard was someone saying “zapatos.” A couple of boys shoved us down on the path, while others yanked at our shoes. Barely pausing to untie the laces, they pulled the shoes right from our feet, then ran off into the park. Neither of us was hurt in the robbery, except for our sense of security and our city-kid pride. But it was a genuinely rattling experience, one that stuck with me and made me empathetic to crime victims for the rest of my life: New York’s future police commissioner and his third-grade classmate walking forlornly home across West Ninety-First Street with nothing but dirty white socks on their feet.
Ray Kelly (Vigilance: My Life Serving America and Protecting Its Empire City)
They can attend the red team event to demonstrate their support, just as New York Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner Ray Kelly and his successor William Bratton made it a point to participate in every single tabletop exercise, described in chapter 4, that was conducted with senior commanders during his tenure. Red teams can also be rewarded for their work—for example, the CIA Red Cell has received the National Intelligence Meritorious Unit Citation on multiple occasions—or a proficient red teamer can conspicuously be promoted to a more senior position.
Micah Zenko (Red Team: How to Succeed By Thinking Like the Enemy)
Jones had a dog; it had a chain; Not often worn, not causing pain; But, as the I.K.L. had passed Their 'Unleashed Cousins Act’ at last, Inspectors took the chain away; Whereat the canine barked ‘Hooray!’ At which, of course, the S.P.U. (Whose Nervous Motorists’ Bill was through) Were forced to give the dog in charge For being Audibly at Large. None, you will say, were now annoyed, Save, haply, Jones - the yard was void. But something being in the lease About ‘alarms to aid the police,’ The U.S.U. annexed the yard For having no sufficient guard. Now if there’s one condition The C.C.P. are strong upon It is that every house one buys Must have a yard for exercise; So Jones, as tenant, was unfit, His state of health was proof of it. Two doctors of the T.T.U.'s Told him his legs, from long disuse, Were atrophied; and saying ‘So From step to higher step we go Till everything is New and True.’ They cut his legs off and withdrew. You know the E.T.S.T.'s views Are stronger than the T.T.U.'s: And soon (as one may say) took wing The Arms, though not the Man, I sing. To see him sitting limbless there Was more than the K.K. could bear. 'In mercy silence with all speed That mouth there are no hands to feed; What cruel sentimentalist, O Jones, would doom thee to exist - Clinging to selfish Selfhood yet? Weak one! Such reasoning might upset The Pump Act, and the accumulation Of all constructive legislation; Let us construct you up a bit ­­- ' The head fell off when it was hit: Then words did rise and honest doubt, And four Commissioners sat about Whether the slash that left him dead Cut off his body or his head. An author in the Isle of Wight Observed with unconcealed delight A land of just and old renown Where Freedom slowly broadened down From Precedent to Precedent. And this, I think, was what he meant.
G.K. Chesterton (Poems By G. K. Chesterton)
Sheriff Flint Cahill had been thinking about how quiet Gilt Edge had been lately, when a call was put through to his office. “Sheriff Flint Cahill?” a man asked in a West Indies accent. “Yes? How may I help you?” “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Your brother Cyrus Cahill?” “Yes.” He sat up a little straighter, holding the phone tighter. “He has disappeared and believed to have gone overboard.” “Gone overboard?” Flint repeated thinking he must have heard wrong. “Yes, he has fallen off the cruise ship he was on.” Flint shook his head. “I’m sorry, who did you say you were?” “The police commissioner here on the island of St. Augusta in the Caribbean.
B.J. Daniels (Wrangler's Rescue (The Montana Cahills, #7))
Additional Commissioner of Police, Gautam Kaul (a cousin of Rajiv Gandhi), were accused of instigating a mob which had killed two people.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay (Sikhs: The Untold Agony Of 1984)
During the Sikh riots, P G Gavai, a retired civil servant was the LG while the security apparatus was headed by an officer of the Indian Police Service, S C Tandon, who was the Commissioner of Police.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay (Sikhs: The Untold Agony Of 1984)
Worry is like a rocking chair,’ thought the police commissioner to himself. ‘It keeps you busy but gets you fucking nowhere.
Ashwin Sanghi (Chanakya's Chant)
Presently the Commissioner of Police walked in. He was a young man and this was his first case and the Greek was highly respected in Luc. “What have you done?” he demanded when he came into the parlour. “It is not the case of what have I done,” the old man said, “but of what I am going to do,” and he took a gun from under the cushion and shot himself through the head. Doctor Colin since those days had often found comfort in the careful sentence of the old Greek storekeeper.
Graham Greene (A Burnt-Out Case)
Whites impose these rules on themselves because they know blacks, in particular, are so quick to take offense. Radio host Dennis Prager was surprised to learn that a firm that runs focus groups on radio talk shows excludes blacks from such groups. It had discovered that almost no whites are willing to disagree with a black. As soon as a black person voiced an opinion, whites agreed, whatever they really thought. When Mr. Prager asked his listening audience about this, whites called in from around the country to say they were afraid to disagree with a black person for fear of being thought racist. Attempts at sensitivity can go wrong. In 2009, there were complaints from minority staff in the Delaware Department of Transportation about insensitive language, so the department head, Carolann Wicks, distributed a newsletter describing behavior and language she considered unacceptable. Minorities were so offended that the newsletter spelled out the words whites were not supposed to use that the department had to recall and destroy the newsletter. The effort whites put into observing racial etiquette has been demonstrated in the laboratory. In experiments at Tufts University and Harvard Business School, a white subject was paired with a partner, and each was given 30 photographs of faces that varied by race, sex, and background color. They were then supposed to identify one of the 30 faces by asking as few yes-or-no questions as possible. Asking about race was clearly a good way to narrow down the possibilities —whites did not hesitate to use that strategy when their partner was white—but only 10 percent could bring themselves to mention race if their partner was black. They were afraid to admit that they even noticed race. When the same experiment was done with children, even white 10- and 11-year olds avoided mentioning race, though younger children were less inhibited. Because they were afraid to identify people by race if the partner was black, older children performed worse on the test than younger children. “This result is fascinating because it shows that children as young as 10 feel the need to try to avoid appearing prejudiced, even if doing so leads them to perform poorly on a basic cognitive test,” said Kristin Pauker, a PhD candidate at Tufts who co-authored the study. During Barack Obama’s campaign for President, Duke University sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva asked the white students in his class to raise their hands if they had a black friend on campus. All did so. At the time, blacks were about 10 percent of the student body, so for every white to have a black friend, every black must have had an average of eight or nine white friends. However, when Prof. Bonilla-Silva asked the blacks in the class if they had white friends none raised his hand. One hesitates to say the whites were lying, but there would be deep disapproval of any who admitted to having no black friends, whereas there was no pressure on blacks to claim they had white friends. Nor is there the same pressure on blacks when they talk insultingly about whites. Claire Mack is a former mayor and city council member of San Mateo, California. In a 2006 newspaper interview, she complained that too many guests on television talk shows were “wrinkled-ass white men.” No one asked her to apologize. Daisy Lynum, a black commissioner of the city of Orlando, Florida, angered the city’s police when she complained that a “white boy” officer had pulled her son over for a traffic stop. She refused to apologize, saying, “That is how I talk and I don’t plan to change.” During his 2002 reelection campaign, Sharpe James, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, referred to his light-skinned black opponent as “the faggot white boy.” This caused no ripples, and a majority-black electorate returned him to office.
Jared Taylor (White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century)
The joint commissioner of the Mumbai police, Rakesh Maria, said of the captured terrorist Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, the only surviving perpetrator of the 2008 mass murder in Mumbai, India, “He was led to believe that he was doing something holy.
Robert R. Reilly (The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist)