What incident caused you to lose respect for authority?

I (early 20's female) was driving late at night the roads were quiet, my friend in the passenger seat. I was turning into a main road with almost zero traffic except a motorcyclist a fair distance away, safe to turn I thought. About 20 secs travel on the main road, the motorcyclist speeds up, closes the gap, then I realize it's a traffic cop, he indicates for me to pull over. The safest place to do so was a very dark side street. Cop comes over "You nearly knocked me off his bike" What???? Apparently my turn into the main road just near missed him. He asks me out of the car and for my details. As I'm answering his questions, he randomly stops and yells at me to "stop laughing at him", he stepped closer to me and I can see he was sweating profusely, his face looked really red and his eyes weird and glazed over. It was so scary, I nodded and did everything I needed to end the interaction, including accepting a ticket for reckless driving.

Would have made a complaint about it, but the same week I heard a story from an old childhood friend. He was assaulted by police while visiting his grandmothers house. In unfortunate timing, he was there at the same time as another cousin (just visiting his Nan also) who police thought was a suspect in a crime. Police turned the house upside and physically hurt him while he was confused by what was going on. He made a formal complaint and had since had police following him around and generally make his life difficult.

/r/AskReddit Thread