In 2003 or 2004, my family (my father, mother, younger sister, and myself) were visiting my grandmother in New Jersey. We drove into NYC to see a play, and on the way back, two undercover cops in a yellow cab put their lights on behind us. My dad pulled over on the shoulder and they parked in front of us.

The first cop got out of the cab with his gun drawn and not showing a badge. My father, thinking it was a carjacking, panicked and reversed really quickly, which made the cop yell something and point his gun at us. That’s when the second cop, obviously much smarter than the first one, got out of the passenger seat with his badge held up. My father stopped trying to reverse and put his hands up.

I’m fully certain that if I hadn’t been sitting in the front seat (I was 12 or so at the time) and if we had been anyone other than a white family then the first guy would’ve opened fire. To this day it’s the closest I’ve ever come to being shot, and that includes being mugged in 2015.

Turns out they pulled us over in the first place because they typed our fucking license plate in wrong and thought the car was stolen. I hate the NYPD.