'They are babies!' Bystanders plead with Georgia officers as they hold 5 black children at gunpoint

[OriginalGeek]

13. When I was a late teen

my friend and I (both white) went to a neighborhood to meet a girl he liked. This was before cell phones but she had told him the day before about when she would be home so we drover over to her subdivision in his sister's beat-up old station wagon and parked on the street near her house and waited. It was a wealthier place than where we lived but not gated or anything.

This was in the early 80s in northeast Texas and we were a couple of metal-head kids wearing band t-shirts and and long hair and smoking cigarettes (thankfully that's all at this time but only because we were out of weed) and waiting for his girl to show up.

Apparently a neighbor didn't like the looks of us because within about 15 minutes of us parking there a police cruiser pulled up behind us and the officers got out and came up to our window (one on each side). They politely asked us to get out of the car, patted us down and found nothing but searched the car and found a kitchen knife under a seat. While they were questioning us about the knife the girl came home, told her mother what she saw and her mother came out and informed the cops that we were with them (super cool mom all things considered) and they thanked us for our time and gave back the knife with a warning that it was a little long for carrying around and we should get it back to the kitchen asap. (It was his sister's boyfriend's knife and it was in the car because he had been doing something earlier that day with it and threw it under the seat instead of taking it back inside).

My friend talked to his girl while listened to Rush on the tape deck and later we went home.

Moral of the story: If you want a pleasant encounter with police (no drawn guns, no shouting, no neck kneeling), be white.

Another time, the same police department stopped us while we did have some weed. In fact, it was in a frisbee that I had been cleaning and about to roll joints in and shoved under the front seat when we got stopped for ignoring a stop sign. (Probably enough for 2 or 3 pinners or one decent fat doob.) Exact words of the officer as he found the frisbee: "Well this is probably gonna mess up your night..." and he took the frisbee and turned it sideways so we could watch all my freshly cleaned weed float off into the night. He was right, it did mess up our night but not as much as a getting shot or arrested would have.

pretty much the same moral of the story.