When I was 21, I went to the US with two friends. We drove around Florida for a week and also spent some time in the Miami Beach area. At that time, it was a bit run-down and shabby, but a few years later, the old Art Deco buildings were renovated and the neighborhood became super trendy.
The advice many people gave us was not to mess with the police if we were stopped, just sit still and do as they said, otherwise we could get shot.
Maybe we thought it was a bit exaggerated, but we realized there was some truth in the advice. We often saw police officers or guards with revolvers around their hips, sometimes with glazed wooden handles like in the Wild West. And we were actually stopped by a police officer on one occasion when we accidentally drove into a private area; he asked where we were from and then asked us to turn around and drive back. Friendly, firm, and authoritative.
The US is an armed and militarized society compared to Europe. And it is horrible that you have to be afraid of being shot by the police. But that’s the way it is. And the people of America know the routines, they talk kindly to the police, follow their instructions, and in 99 cases out of 100, everything works peacefully.
The police have great authority in the US. You do as they say and don’t mess with them. One of the reasons the police are so authoritarian is that the population is armed. Police officers don’t know whether the person they are talking to is carrying a weapon or not. Therefore, they must be extra cautious and prepared for the worst. So, it’s not just about trigger-happy cops, no; being prepared to respond to violence is probably embedded in the culture, especially in certain states.
We see it in Hollywood movies and read about it in American books; there is hardly a story that does not contain some form of violence. Fights, shootings, and wild car chases. That’s the image we have of America, which is partly true. Many Europeans believe that the US is a sick society, that it is brutal and uncivilized. Nothing that corresponds to our own values and culture. It is something foreign and distant.
In such a society, it is not appropriate to start arguing with federal police officers from ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). You risk your life here. Yet we see activists following police cars and trying to prevent them from doing their job. And there has been a lot of coverage in social media about activists being shot. ICE officers are called fascists and accused of dictatorial tendencies.
But most people understand that nothing unusual has happened. And that “sit still, or they’ll shoot you” still applies. Nothing has changed.
