When I linked to a study showing police stop Black drivers more often than speed cameras, I wrote:

There’s no denying DWB is real; I’ve experienced it myself multiple times.

Here’s one example. I originally wrote this in June 2008 for my now-defunct personal blog. I’ve updated temporal references appropriately, and lightly edited for clarity.

In late 2005, my buddy Ron and I and several other coworkers volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. Ron had asked our company to sponsor an event for the Black employees association, which included buying several boxes of pizza for the volunteers. By the end of the day, there were a lot of half-empty boxes no one wanted, so Ron decided to take them home.

We plopped into my Nissan Altima for the drive back to his place in Mountain View; me, with my baseball cap turned backwards; Ron, many boxes of pizza on his lap; both of us shabby from building houses. As we’re approaching our exit on the freeway, we notice a cop car trailing us. My immediate comment to Ron was “I bet you he exits with us” and, sure enough, he does.

But then, he passes us on the left and pulls a couple of cars ahead of us. As we wait for a light to change, I think, hey, it was just a coincidence, no ulterior motives.

We turn onto Ron’s block and park. Ron gets out, and I notice there are flashing lights behind us. Ron looks back, his hands filled with pizza boxes, and asks, somewhat incredulously, “Did he just pull us over?”

Yep. He sure did. He’d apparently waited until we turned, then flipped on his lights and followed us.

The cop gets out of his car, strolls over to us and asks for my license and registration, which I dutifully hand over. A well-trained question crosses my lips.

“What seems to be the problem, officer?”

His answer will go down in the annals of justification history: “I noticed your front license plate was missing.”

I glance over at Ron, then back to the cop.

“I know,” I say evenly. “Is that a problem?”

“There are people who steal the front license plates from cars, and put them onto similar vehicles. If you do a plate check, it seems to match.”

“So,” I ask coolly, “you wanted to warn me that my front plate was missing, in case it had been stolen and used on another, stolen, car?”

“That’s correct.”

I took a breath.

“Well, I only have the one,” I fibbed with a small smile, knowing full well the second one was on the back—and had been for some three years.

“Sometimes they come stuck together from the DMV, and you end up with both on the back.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that,” I responded with faux concern. “I’ll have to check that when I get home!”

At some point during this conversation, I’d gotten out the car so the cop could show me the missing plate I already knew was missing, and was standing with Ron, both of us rolling our eyes at each other in disbelief. 

I eventually thanked the officer for his concern and assured him that my front license plate hadn’t been stolen (since one had never been placed there), and that I’d be sure to check my rear plate for a second one stuck to the first.

I also felt compelled to slip in during the conversation, in my best “I’m an educated black man: Your worst nightmare” voice, that we both worked for Apple, had just come from volunteering at Habitat for Humanity after having bought a dozen pizzas for the crew, and were taking the rest home. Just to let him know that he wasn’t dealing with a couple of punk-ass kids.

I asked if there’s anything else we can do for him, and bade him farewell, and we watched, shaking our heads, as he returned to his vehicle and pulled away.

Here we were, two intelligent, well-paid, well-spoken Black men in somewhat shabby clothing, pulled over by a cop who’d followed us on the freeway, run our plates and found nothing, but—still suspicious of two disheveled Black men driving a well-maintained car and carrying several boxes of pizza—“found” a reason to “inform” us that our front plate was missing.

Purely as a courtesy, of course.

If only we didn’t have those pizzas.