Grammy-winning musician and DJ Questlove has been stopped by police between 20 and 30 times in his lifetime, he told Democracy Now! in an interview this week touching on racial profiling and stop-and-frisk policies.

The co-founder and drummer for “The Roots” and music manager on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” recounted his first encounter with police, which occurred when he was a teenager growing up in Philadelphia. In 1987, he and a friend were stopped while driving back from buying the U2 album The Joshua Tree.

“A cop stopped us, and he was holding a gun on us. There is nothing like the first time that a gun is held on you,” he said. “We’re 16, mind you, like 16, 17 years old, and I just remember the protocol, I remember my father telling me, like, ‘If you’re ever in this position, you’re to slowly keep your hands up.’…How I knew that was the protocol at that young age, I mean, it’s probably a sad commentary, but it was also a matter of survival.”

Even today, he “gets stopped all the time,” he said. He was “stopped for unknown reasons” as recently as a few weeks ago. After finishing a regular Thursday night DJ gig in Brooklyn, police officers pulled over him and his driver, shined flashlights into the car, and asked him: “Why are you sitting in the back seat like a don?” The police only released him after he showed them a copy of his new memoir, Mo’ Meta Blues.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/08/15/2476401/questlove-has-been-profiled-by-police-20-30-times/