In a parking lot in a whitebread shopping center. It was the parking lot of a Nordstrom, which makes sense the more I think about it, as they were probably watching me from the surveillance the whole time I was there, making sure I wasn't trying to pick up their white wimmins. I thought maybe my outfit was troublesome, then I remembered I was wearing a Levi's jacket, athletic pants and sunglasses, hardly attention-drawing attire. And my pants were up, which could have been a mistake. The second I stepped foot back in the lot, I noticed the cop car trailing me. I was all the way in the back, because I like easy parking, so the cop, a clean-cut white boy in his early 20s, must have thought he was some kind of ninja, except I could hear the motor behind me the whole time, so he was a pretty bad ninja. I was walking between cars to reach the straight line that was the direction to my car, and the motherfucker kept zig-zagging to meet me and kept giving me a look, which I averted my gaze from (because it's the exact same concept as a minivan driver making eye contact with a 'I like ponies!' on Roosevelt in Chicago). Finally, I reached my car, and fuck, our eyes met, and he stopped me from reaching my car. "You okay?" he asked. Thinking quickly, and knowing full well that any misstep meant the rest of the day in jail for anything he might have thought up between zig-zags, the first thing that came to my mind was "yup."

Frustrated, he moved along. "Curses!" he must have thought. Let another one get away. Of course, he then tailed me out of the lot as I drove out, too. Finally, stop sign, turn, home free. This can only mean that The Man is planning some kind of assault on me. I'd better not set foot near a Nordstrom again! That'll teach me!

Maybe you did something suspicious that made him think you were up to no good. Then again maybe he's just a racist dick that picks on minorities, but don't you realize assuming that he's racist just because he's a mid-20's white cop that asked you if you were "ok" makes you just as ignorant as him? Now, if he'd made you perform a bunch of sobriety tests and hassled you further, I'd agree with you. Sounds like you just automatically judged him because he was doing his job.

That's a little messed up that the cop felt he needed to feel you out. Being a straight white middle class man in America, I honestly have absolutely no way of experiencing that kind of discrimination, so I'm not even going to fucking pretend I get where you're coming from.

Wanna get angry? I blew two stop signs in a row because I was playing on my I-pod. The cop pulled me over and I said, "sorry officer, I didn't see them. They should really be more clearly marked." He let me go without even a warning. I didn't even have my seat-belt buckled and one of my break lights was out.

BTW, this Louis CK discussion about the Henry Louis Gates snafu and racism is fucking hilarious:

I don't think all cops are racist. But I think MOST cops are racist, and DEFINITELY discriminatory. I don't just mean race (ethnicity) here. I've seen the same shit with long-haired dudes, Arabs, etc. It's not so much about "He's racist!" It's about some assholes with a badge using it to BULLY people. I wasn't being suspicious; trust me, I've lived this. The point of this whole thing is that there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING SUSPICIOUS about the whole thing. It was just some "punk motherfucker with a badge and a gun" who had a bone to pick from issues he had in high school. This guy was in his early 20s, and not the biggest dude, either. This shit isn't new. Go to a sporting event sometime and sit back and watch at the ticket gates how discriminatory the process is. Watch how the cutesy college girl goes right in. Now watch as any black teenager goes in. This isn't paranoia. Yeah, I know, self-fulfilling prophecies, past experience, blah blah blah. Doesn't change that it's flat-out discrimination and mistreatment. A buddy of mine in college (long hair, "dude"like beard) got all but raped in some search they did on him. Clean all his life, too. Just sayin'.



I get that. Trust me, I do. I've met a number of good cops. Two (elsewhere) are even friends of mine. One is even white. But I've been around the block enough times to know this guy wasn't asking if I was "okay." Ever see First Blood? The tone was such that he was looking for me to look for trouble, and wasn't looking to help me at all. I'm not judging blindly here, this is based on experience. My next response was going to dictate whether or not he would get to make a scene and therefore a name for himself. I realize I'm venting, but this wasn't something where I mistook a kind gesture in a hostile manner. This was me averting my gaze so I could get the fuck out of Dodge, and anybody who has been through this (much less multiple times) knows what I mean.

Maybe it's just because I wasn't there and I'm only reading about the situation. Sure if he had that tone and was giving you a look I could understand that, it's just the way you said it made it sound like you were speaking about cops in general.

Just saying that you may have done something subconsciously that was suspicious without realizing it. I work at Best buy and at times, I work the Loss Prevention (BB security :/ ), so I know what we look for and unfortunately there are a few stereotypes and actions we look for because more than 60% of our loss comes from certain types of people dressed certain ways acting certain ways.

Anyways, I was walking around a different Best Buy that was close to my school and didn't realize that I was being super suspicious. I had picked up a video game, then looked around (was trying to find the video cards, and I wasn't familiar with the layout of this store), and went to the back corner where the video cards were. I started noticing that a lot of employee's started contacting me frequently and the LP guy was walking around my area after I had done this.

It hit me that I made it look like I was going to the back corner to open up that game and steal it. I was sort of mad at first, but then again, I've been in that LP guys shoes, and more times than not, when someone grabs a game, looks around and goes to the back corner of the store out of the camera's vision, that game ends up being stolen.

I'm not saying that your situation was exactly that extreme, but I'm just saying maybe you did some small thing that looked suspicious to him, and since he's young, he's probably new and still hasn't gotten a feel for everything yet. I could be wrong, he could be racist and was just looking to hassle you, but lets just be thankful he didn't.

mall cop = rubber badges = real cop

fuck em