"Many crimes committed by my people are drug and alcohol related. I don't believe these are criminal matters, they are health problems. Us mob have cultural lore that has been practised long before colonisation, and we continue to utilise it."

"I am angry about the way police continue to treat my people. I am angry about the overrepresentation of my people among this country's incarcerated population. I am angry about the deaths in custody of my people, and I am furious that to date no police have ever been held accountable."

"I spend half my time in the job educating others about my culture, and the other half explaining my reasons I became a sworn police officer and not a police liason officer, not to mention the shit I put up with from other officers. You either conform to become one of them and allow yourself to become apart of the racist system and their racist ideologies about your own people, or you are in a constant battle defending yourself."

"The way police treated people depended on which suburb they were from. If you lived in the wealthier suburbs and committed a crime, police used their discretion and gave out warnings, in direct contrast to how they treated people from the so-called 'poorer' suburbs."

"I yearn to know the people I love deeply and intimately, without context, without boxes, and I yearn for them to know me that way too."

CW: Aboriginal deaths

"Since the Royal Comminisson into Aboriginal deaths in custody report was completed in 1991, there have been a further 437 deaths and no police have ever been made accountable."

Whilst I don't find it surprising that we aren't loudly told this number by the government, it's so important that we all know this number. It's honestly way more than I realised before reading this book, and there are probably more deaths we don't know about