So when I was 16, I got pulled over by a cop. He came at a weird angle to the driver’s side door, hand on his gun. Then he politely noted my back license plate was missing & gestured for me to get out & look. I exhaled. Then he came at me from behind and flipped me on the ground.

He put a his knee on my back parallel with my spine. It feels like my chest is going to collapse. A short time later another cop shows up and points his gun at me. They start making references to the car I was driving as being the most frequently stolen car.

These allegations escalate to the point where they accuse me of stealing my family’s car. All the while this cop has his knee and shin pinning my torso to the ground. It’s hard to explain how helpless and terrifying it feels not to be able to breathe with no way out.

The other cop is running the info on my car. This takes a little bit as it’s the mid-90’s. It feels like hours. The cop pinning me makes a comment, “I know your kind...” Eventually, the info comes back that I obviously didn’t steal a car that belongs to my family.

Then, both cops start saying things like, “You know you blasted through that stop sign. You’re a danger to the community. You’re lucky someone didn’t get killed.” Even my 16-year-old self knew what they were doing in trying to justify their actions.

I stopped at the stop sign. But even I start to doubt whether I actually did or not. It’s funny how power can fuck with your mind. They finally let me go with a warning “they’ll be watching me.” Once they left, I just sat in the car & cried. Then I drove home and cried some more.

Once I stopped crying, I just stared at the wall for an hour until my mom got home. Now, as a psychologist, I can recognize the obvious trauma response.

I was most hurt that they scuffed up the Shaq jersey my parents had bought me for my birthday a few weeks earlier. I knew they spent like $45 on it, which was a decent chunk of change for my family at the time.

Now, imagine navigating all of this as a mixed race, transracial adoptee. I suppose that part is a story for another thread. My mom drove to the police department and rained down the fires of hell on them. I heard her use words I’d never heard before.

They “waived” the ticket for running the stop sign after an hour of my mom fighting to talk to supervisor after supervisor. They couldn’t, however, waive the trauma.

I didn’t drive a rental car until my 30s for fear that I would be accused of stealing the car with no way to prove otherwise. I would make up lies to not drive my white girlfriend’s (now wife) car for the same reason. I didn’t tell her this story for years our of embarrassment.

To this day, the minute I see a cop, my body goes into a state of what my field calls “hyper-vigilance.” See, I don’t call it that. I think it’s the proper amount of vigilance to survive the potential threat.

When I saw the video of George Lloyd, my lungs struggled to breathe. Tears streamed down my face almost reflexively. I smash-cut back to the cop having his full weight on my back. For some of us, this is more than “politics” or some “culture war.” It’s real life. Thx for reading.