None of my friends or relatives has been killed by a police officer and even at this stage of my life I still have that &quot;fuck the police&quot; mindset.<p>I&#x27;ll explain.<p>Ever since I was about 15 years old, police have treated me like a suspect. I have been stopped, patted down, searched and generally harassed in the vast majority of my interactions with police.<p>On one occasion, I was walking from a friend&#x27;s house back to mine and I watched a cop do a u-turn in the middle of a highway to pull up and start questioning me. I have been pulled over because it &quot;looked like the air in your rear passenger tire is low&quot; and I had two units behind me with cops peeking into my car while they ran my information.<p>Just about six months ago I was pulled over for &quot;excessive lane changing&quot;. I asked the officer if he saw that I changed lanes to get around someone who was turning and that I had to return to that lane because approximately a quarter of a mile later, I was going to making my own turn. He responded that he had been following me for a few miles and I had made other lane changes. I was on my way home from work and I had things to do. I signaled before every lane change and I did nothing dangerous or reckless. It was a pretextual stop.<p>About two years ago, I was stopped while riding my bicycle. The officer who stopped me is someone that I have known since elementary school. When he saw that it was me, his demeanor was nice and friendly. I can only imagine how he would have acted if I had been a stranger.<p>In every one of those encounters, had I reached too quickly for my wallet, I would have likely ended up dead.<p>My experiences are not unique and these are not the worst. A lot of the black, brown and increasingly poor white guys with whom I grew up have had similar things happen.<p>The point that I&#x27;m trying to make here is that the antipathy that police officers experience is primarily of their own making.