- Joe Ricco: You look worse than usual.
- George Cronyn: I slept in the car last night. Mary threw me out of the house.
- Joe Ricco: I envy you. You've got such a clear cut view of the law, it's not complicated with minor details like the Bill of Rights or due process.
- George Cronyn: I don't live in a courtroom where everything's always regulated and neat. Sometimes I come home with blood on my shirt instead of ink!
- Mrs. Callahan: The man from the mayor's office called about the murders. Nothing, huh?
- George Cronyn: We're up the creek without a paddle.
- Mrs. Callahan: Ah, you been there before, Captain.
- George Cronyn: Yeah, but that doesn't make it smell any better. Mrs. Callahan, where's my cup?
- Mrs. Callahan: Somebody stole it.
- Sally: I've got information on those cop killers.
- Joe Ricco: Why don't you go to the police.
- Sally: Well, I wouldn't mind going to the cops; but, I'm working for a white man now and I just don't want to be run in by every cracker cop who doesn't like white and black mixing. I got a kid to raise and I couldn't do it in jail.
- Lt. Harmon Jackson: It was a white thing at the pole that triggered on the Kennedys, not to mention Martin Luther King and George Wallace. Let's not paint the bastard with color until we're sure we got the right bucket.
- Irene Mapes: Look, maybe my brothers hated cops. That's something that just comes naturally when you come up like we did. But, they didn't kill any cops.
- Purvis Mapes: Hey, come on, man. Calvin was in the head when the pigs busted in. How many people do you know take a shotgun in the head with 'em, huh?
- Purvis Mapes: They don't teach us that much at the post office. It ain't a highly skilled technical job like you farm boys here - what - shovel shit and get intimate with the livestock.
- Arkansas: Just keep it up, peckerhead. I like black humor. As a matter of fact, I like it so much, I just might tell my lawyer not to spring me so that I could stay and *visit* you tonight and stick my envelop up your mailbox. I'd like to see you shuffle and jive then, boy.
- Purvis Mapes: I do the same for you too, boss. But, your head's already up there blockin' the way.
- Joe Ricco: Hey, what do you think this is? A kid's game where you don't squeal on your buddy? Steele's out there getting stoned and laid and you're in a cell playing with yourself. Now, wise up!
- George Cronyn: All you have to do is stall. In the meantime, I'll be laying on the old charm with a shovel. She'll come around. You'll see.
- Joe Ricco: Well, from what I've seen, you'd get a hernia from working up a teaspoon full of charm.
- George Cronyn: That's Cronyn the cop. You've never been exposed to Cronyn the lover.
- Joe Ricco: Spare me.
- George Cronyn: I don't need you to tell me my job, I've been doing it for 20 years. 20 years of being shot at and beat up on by sick, filthy creeps whose own mothers would've flushed 'em down the toilet if they'd a known how they were gonna turn out. And in all those years, not once did John Q. Citizen or any slick mob beast offer to pull my tail out of a jam. It was always another cop laying his life on the line to save me!
- Joe Ricco: Maybe it's about time you quit or have you forgotten that a cop is not the law, he just enforces it.
- Katherine Fremont: Maybe there's a master plan.
- Joe Ricco: Well, I don't understand big patterns, only - petty grievances.
- Tanner: I say put the squeeze on the stoolies. Let 'em get off their rear ends and sniff around every one of those - soul food joints in Havin's Point. And tell 'em no more bread. Nothin'! Tell 'em we'll throw them in the slammer unless they come up with the black *bastard* that pulled that trigger.
- Joe Ricco: How'd you know I was coming?
- Frankie Steele: Purvis is my man, not your boy. I wanted to see you.
- Joe Ricco: I still don't believe that Steele's the man we want?
- George Cronyn: You don't? Well, after he shoves a shotgun up your ass and a split second before he pulls the trigger, give me a call on the phone and tell me that your positive. I'll move in and make the arrest, okay? Is that how you want me to handle it?
- Joe Ricco: You really see yourself as a big, black hero, don't you?
- Frankie Steele: I got my shit. You've got yours.
- Frankie Steele: Where were you when they were killed?
- Frankie Steele: Gettin' laid.
- Joe Ricco: Can you prove it?
- Frankie Steele: She's high society white. She's not going to get on the witness stand and tell the whole world. Her husband's not as liberal as she is. She's just - rich.
- Tanner: Tampering with some fingerprints of one dead nigger. That's not breaking the law. That's expediting.