As a white female who lives in a middle to upper class area, I have never had a scary or dangerous encounter with the police. But one time, I did have an interesting, even somewhat amusing encounter with them. It was this past summer during “Manhattan-henge” when the light from the sun was hitting the buildings of Manhattan in a pretty way, and my mom and I went outside to see it. As we walked towards 23rd street, we passed an area that seemed swamped with police. My mom was curious about what was going on, so she asked one of the policemen. He said they were just “hanging out”, there was nothing going on and we should just keep going. We did keep going, but we found the whole thing a little odd.

Later, after we had gone and taken pictures of the Manhattan-henge light, we found out there had been a protest right there where the police had been “hanging out”. In some ways, it seemed kind of funny to my mom and I that this policeman had straight up lied to us (and not very well at that) about something that really was not such a big deal. But it also goes to show that there is a lack of trust between the police and the communities they serve. Obviously, this isn’t the most dramatic example of this lack of trust. That specific policeman could have been at the end of his shift, ready to go home, and not wanting to explain this protest to some random person on the street. But that’s really the only experience I ever had with the police that sticks out to me.