“I will not go back to pre-Kirkpatrick ways.”

– Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick, saying she’ll resist the Spokane Police Guild’s objections to a policy she and Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich worked out making sheriff’s deputies the lead investigators in fatal incidents involving city police officers.

“It’s hard for me to get into the mentality of people who bring their families out and don’t think about what they’re leaving behind for the next family.”

– Superintendent Debbie Bird of the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area, as she guided a tour group consisting of regional political leaders through the beach and campground areas where human and pet wastes are such a problem that some group members were complaining of the smell.

“I never want a farmer to stop farming, but I don’t think they should be allowed to endanger people’s lives.”

– Asthma sufferer Vivian Evans, of Rathdrum, voicing approval of a federal court ruling that ended nontribal grass field burning on North Idaho’s Rathdrum Prairie.

“He’s opened new doors to me and broken down barriers.”

– Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Eastern Washington’s representative in Congress, who is balancing her official duties with those of having a 4-month-old son, Cole, who has Down syndrome.

“If the audience can’t empathize with the cop, then we are in trouble and we don’t have anything.”

– Morgan Langley, son of “Cops” creator John Langley, describing part of the theory behind the cable television program, an upcoming episode of which will feature Spokane for the third time in the show’s 20-year history.

“The mountain is still alive, the mountain is still moving, and we cannot endanger the rescue workers as we drive toward these trapped miners.”

– Crandall Canyon Mine co-owner Bob Murray, after a cave-in at the Huntington, Utah, mine took the lives of three rescuers who were trying to reach six miners trapped underground by another cave-in a week and a half earlier.

“All they do is come and beat the hell out of everything.”

– Hillyard-area business manager Jeff Hayward, attributing a rash of north Spokane vandalism to some of the teens who hang out at a nearby skate park.

“Something’s wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries.”

– Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, after the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics reported that the United States ranks 42nd in the world in life expectancy.

“Used to be that when you drove the grain trucks to town it was a big deal. Now sometimes it feels like you’re just a big truck that’s in the way.”

– Ritzville-area wheat grower Alan Koch, speculating that farmers aren’t as appreciated as they once were, even in rural communities.

“I’ve got to wonder what kind of moron would Tase an adult holding a baby. It doesn’t take rocket science to realize the baby is going to fall.”

– Former police officer and Florida State University criminologist George Kirkham, speaking about a security guard who used a stun gun on a father who was trying to take his newborn daughter home from a Houston hospital before doctors had approved it.