As a fellow American citizen, I think their concerns are reasonable. This varies a great deal by city, and one&#x27;s experience of police can vary a great deal by the extent they decide you look suspicious. Factors there include race, gender, and all sorts of subtle appearance cues that can be mysterious to foreigners.<p>A sysadmin pal, for example, was walking down the street in a major city dressed in our standard sysadmin shabby with his beloved but somewhat ragged hometown baseball cap. Some cop decided that he looked to be a guy who had just shot a cop. They eventually sorted out the mistake, but my pal needed treatment in a hospital afterward. To this day he can&#x27;t stand cops.<p>And that&#x27;s in a city where I think the police are generally chill. When I lived in Chicago, I learned to treat cops with the deference I&#x27;d give to a vigorous, ill-tempered horse. The may have thought I was treating them with respect, but in my case it was a distrust born of observing how they treated other residents.