Every American family should have one.

When I was 16, I was walking home one night from my girlfriend's (at the time) like any other night. Now, as a teen, I had a shaved head, but that's as far as it goes for me looking like "a bad ass". I was super straight edge. I got to the corner across the street from my apartment, and I was waiting patiently at the light to cross, when all of a sudden I hear the... Read More » wailers and see flashing lights coming in my direction. Two cops get out of their car, tell me to come over and proceed to start hassling me. Given where I lived (tantamount to gang territory) and the fact that I was a teen out past 11PM, this was annoying, but not a huge surprise. The first question they asked me was "where am I going?" I said home. They asked where home is, and I could point to my window from where I was standing. That wasn't good enough. They decided they were going to demand that I "empty my pockets on the hood of the car". I refused, at which point they accused me of having something to hide. But what they didn't know was that I was taking classes in Canadian law at my high school, and had already covered the section on statutes on search and seizure and probable cause. So I told them flat out: "Give me your badge number, and I'll empty my pockets. And, when you find nothing there, I'll be down at your station tomorrow with a lawyer and I won't leave until I have your job because I gave you no probable cause to stop me, let alone undergo a search and seizure of my personal belongings. And if you don't like it, fuck off". Needless to say, they got back in their car and told me to go home. And I did, smiling.

February 16, 2012