Lawrence O'Donnell > Quotes

“Most politicians are more frustrated by the way their own party disappoints them than the way the other party opposes them. They expect opposition from the opposing party. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. Dealing with that opposition is a full-time job, and they expect to have the support of their own party in that eternal struggle. But when their own party turns against them, disagrees with them, or just goes off in another direction, they feel unsupported by their party and sometimes betrayed.”
― Lawrence O'Donnell, Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics

“with American police killing about six hundred people a year, an October 1981 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded that “no effective protection from police misconduct seems to exist for the individual citizen.”
― Lawrence O'Donnell, Deadly Force: A Police Shooting and My Family's Search for the Truth

“Killing by the police is investigated by the police, if investigated at all. Not surprisingly, less than 1 percent of the killings are ruled unjustifiable by police departments.”
― Lawrence O'Donnell, Deadly Force: A Police Shooting and My Family's Search for the Truth

“many of the country’s fifteen thousand or so police departments have no deadly force rules. That leaves state law as the only word on when an officer can shoot, and ignores the question of when he should shoot.”
― Lawrence O'Donnell, Deadly Force: A Police Shooting and My Family's Search for the Truth

“Cops can do things in a minute or a second that will sour a community for a generation.”
― Lawrence O'Donnell, Deadly Force: A Police Shooting and My Family's Search for the Truth