[Opinionated Blowhard]

When I was in my late teens, I was waiting in line to get on an Amtrak train. The police pulled me out of the line, broke open the lock on my trunk and searched it — pulling everything out and putting it on the ground in the middle of the station. Apparently they were told to be on the lookout for a teenage drug carrier and I guess I looked the part. They didn’t find anything, didn’t apologize and simply left met to put everything back together and rush to catch the train. What’s the point? Everyone has encounters where they are treated badly. A lot of people have dealings with the police where the police may not be as sensitive or polite as they could be. Most people just deal with it and move on with their lives.

[Cronos]

My two cents - quite often black people experience what you experienced, only they experience it over and over again. This time it was imagined, but quite often it is real.

[Army Air Corps]

Most people just deal with it and move on with their lives.

Yes, mature individuals do that. Hypersensitive, perpetually aggrieved people do not.

[Lizavetta]

My blond blue-eyed son is ROUTINELY pulled aside at the airport and patted down, including having his man bun searched for narcotics. Why? He looks like a druggie. Long hair, dresses like his raggedy kayaker buddies, sandals, doesn't look particularly clean, etc.

I've told him, and he knows it, that if he looks a certain way, he'll be treated a certain way. He knows it but is too determined at the age of 24 to cultivate that look and do what he wants to do.

He is well aware that he is absolutely being profiled ... but as a very hardworking moral young man with a degree in Mandarin teaching English who blames the TSA not in the least, he understands the rationale for it.

[Steven Tyler]

Me Too!!!

I worked as a busboy at a 5 star restaurant.
I left work at 2:30 am with my pockets full of tips.
My uniform was in my knapsack.
I decided to buy a soda and stopped at a coke machine outside a gas station.

Kid-night-bike-knapsack-riding around.

Yup, police pulled me over asking what I was doing, where I was going, and searched my knapsack

[bgill]

Mr. b propped his head on his arm on top of his luggage as he sat on a bench in front of the San Antonio airport waiting for me to pick him up a couple years ago. Security acted like he was a homeless bum sleeping at their front steps. Maybe he should have sued. Instead, he showed them his LE badge. No, he didn’t look like a bum. One kid on the plane thought he was zoo keeper on tv - can’t think of his name.