Howard Colvin quotes from The Wire

Colvin

Middle management means that you got just enough responsibility to listen when people talk, but not so much you can't tell anybody to go fuck themselves.

Colvin

I swear to God, I have over 200 sworn personnel and I will free them all up to brutalize every one of you they can. If you're on a corner in my district, it will not be just a humble or a loitering charge. It will be some Biblical shit that happens to you on the way into that jail wagon. You understand? We will not be playing by any rules that you recognize.

Colvin

What I'm sayin' is, come tomorrow, if I don't have a shooter in bracelets, the Hamsterdam thing is over, finished. It's back to the corners for all of us and fuck y'all any way we can. You hear me? It was good while it lasted. For y'all it was cash on the barrel and no one needs no bail money. For me, I had clean corners damn near everywhere I looked. But that's all gone tomorrow unless y'all bring me my shooter.

Colvin

You put a textbook in front of these kids, put a problem on the blackboard, teach them every problem in some statewide test, it won't matter. None of it. 'Cause they're not learning for our world; they're learning for theirs. They know exactly what it is they're training for and what it is everyone expects them to be. It's not about you or us or the test or the system. It's what they expect of themselves. Every single one of them know they're headed back to the corners. Their brothers and sisters, shit, their parents. They came through these same classrooms. We pretended to teach them, they pretended to learn and where'd they end up? Same damn corners. They're not fools, these kids. They don't know our world but they know their own. They see right through us.

Colvin

This drug thing, this ain't police work. I mean, I can send any fool with a badge and a gun to a corner to jack a crew and grab vials. But policing? I mean you call something a war, and pretty soon everyone is going to be running around acting like warriors. They gonna be running around on a damn crusade, storming corners, racking up body counts. And when you at war, you need a fucking enemy. And pretty soon, damn near everybody on every corner is your fucking enemy. And soon, the neighborhood you're supposed to be policing, that's just occupied territory. You follow this?

Carver

Think so.

Colvin

Okay The point I'm making is this: Soldiering and policing, they ain't the same thing. And before we went and took the wrong turn and start up with these war games, the cop walked a beat, and he learned that post. And if there were things that happened on that post, where there be a rape, a robbery, or a shooting, he had people out there helping him, feeding him information. But every time I came to you, my DEU sergeant, for information, to find out what's going on out on them streets... all that came back was some bullshit. You had your stats, your arrests, your seizures, but don't none of that amount to shit when it comes to protecting the neighborhood, now do it? [sighs] You know, he worst thing about this, so-called drug war, to my mind...it just, it ruined this job.

Namond

Bunny?

Colvin

Only my friends call me Bunny.

Namond

Yeah, but why?

Colvin

You don't need to know. And if you tell anybody, I'll cut your balls off.

Carver

The young man seems to think highly of you boss. He invoked your name with a measure of respect.

Colvin

It wasn't but a few weeks ago when I was in a room with him being called everything but a child of God. "Mr. Colvin sir. Fuck you."

Namond

Yo' at least I said mister.

Carver

[abut Namond] His mother... [shakes head]

Colvin

Lovely lady. What she say?

Carver

"Put that bitch in baby booking where he belong. Let him learn something."

We get the grant, we study the problem, we propose solutions. If they listen, they listen. If they don't, it still makes for great research. What we publish on this is gonna get a lot of attention.

Colvin

From who?

From other researchers, academics.

Academics?! What, they gonn' study your study? [chuckles and shakes head] When do this shit change?

Carcetti

You know, I always wanted to say how sorry I am about how things turned out. There wasn't anything I could have done with your experiment in the Western District, there wasn't anything that anyone could have done with that.

Colvin

Yeah, well, I guess, Mr. Mayor, there's nothing to be done.