Josh Ling @ Adopt Me!

I’ve watched that video a dozen times wondering if I’d make the same mistake if I were in that situation. All Shaver did was reach back to pull his shorts up when they fell a little. A subconscious, small hand motion. He probably didn’t even think about it. And it ended his life

What if I missed an instruction because of the K-Pop blaring in my ears? What if I reached for my ears and this rookie flinched?

One of the ear cups must have shifted because I could hear the cop yelling. As he instructed. I got on the ground and crawled my hands forward. Kind of like Shaver.

They put the bracelets on and oddly enough I felt a little safer after that. I was still screaming for them to take of my headphones which they did. They searched my pockets and gym bag. I hadn’t taken anything so I was fine. They let me go.

That’s the scary part. Here’s. The infuriating part. The clerk at the store called the police because she thought I was shop lifting. When Nassau County PD got the call. It was for an armed robbery.

When they came in, they were looking for somebody with a gun. That’s why theirs were drawn. The bottle of conditioner I picked out was white. What if I had picked the black bottle? What if they had seen it wrong?

What if my skin was darker? What if the cops had been a little bit jumpy?

If this has gone bad. I never would have told my side of the story. Yeah, the news story would have said I was unarmed. But those four officers would have command of the narrative.