By Elia Kazan, 2/26/2026

There is a growing cultural habit of escalating ordinary social interactions into police encounters. I have experienced this repeatedly while doing nothing more than existing in public spaces during a recent road trip.

In one instance, in Brea, California, I was parked in a Whole Foods lot for lunch. I engaged in brief, casual conversation with a woman about her HOKA shoes. I asked if they are really good for long-distance walking. The interaction was respectful. However, minutes later, she reported to police that I was “acting suspicious and possibly breaking into cars.” That’s what the officers told me. They arrived in a heightened state, detained me, frisked me, and demanded identification. From a constitutional standpoint, this raises Fourth Amendment concerns. A detention requires a reasonably articulable suspicion (RAS) of criminal activity, not merely that a bystander felt uneasy. A frisk requires reasonable suspicion that a person is armed and dangerous. A false or exaggerated report cannot retroactively create reasonable suspicion. If the only basis for the stop was an uncorroborated claim unsupported by observable conduct, the legality of the detention is very questionable and possibly infringing.

A second encounter occurred at Texas A&M University–Kingsville, a public institution bound by constitutional constraints. While walking on campus to stretch my legs, I passed a student and briefly asked about her major, her future career plan, and whether this was the flagship campus. The exchange lasted approximately two minutes, and I wished her a wonderful day. She later reported feeling “uncomfortable,” and campus police ambushed me, ordering me to leave. The officers cited a university policy allowing them to remove non-affiliated individuals reported as “suspicious.” Analysis: public universities are state actors. On public sidewalks and open campus areas, speech is generally protected unless it crosses into harassment or threats. Discomfort alone is not a constitutional standard. The exchange was brief and respectful, containing nothing aggressive, violent, or sexually suggestive. The First Amendment does not yield to subjective reactions. If no policy violation or threat occurred, removing a citizen solely because a listener felt uneasy raises serious viewpoint neutrality and due process concerns. A policy that allows for the immediate removal of a citizen based solely on an unverified, subjective report, without investigating the facts or allowing the individual to be heard, raises serious due process and viewpoint neutrality concerns. If no policy violation or actual threat occurred, using police power to enforce a listener’s “feeling” of unease risks turning public spaces into restricted zones at the whim of any passerby.

The third incident involved a public library. While charging my laptop, I was walking around pursuing books. I passed by an unmarked glass door to a conference room. I opened the door, but then immediately closed it, because I wasn’t even interested in stepping foot. Minutes later, police were called and they ambushed me. They detained, frisked, and questioned me. I felt dehumanized. If the library employee had simply said, “Just so you know, that room is restricted,” that would have given me notice and would have been the end of it. Criminal trespass requires clear notice that entry is forbidden. Absent signage or verbal warnings, it is difficult to establish knowing unlawful entry. Again, detention must be justified by RAS. Without it, the encounter becomes an overextension of police authority based on assumption rather than evidence.

Across all three incidents, the common thread is escalation. Ordinary, non-threatening behavior triggered emergency responses in public spaces: a parking lot, a university sidewalk, and a library. The legal system is built on objective standards: reasonable suspicion, probable cause, and neutral enforcement. It is not built on subjective discomfort.

It is unsettling to see how quickly people now bypass social resolution in favor of law enforcement. Instead of managing personal discomfort or addressing a situation directly, there is an unsettling reflex to involve the police. When authority is invoked as a response to mere social awkwardness or unfamiliarity, constitutional protections are strained. Public space requires a level of tolerance for benign interaction. The solution to mild discomfort should be disengagement, not dispatch. The less we interact as fellow citizens, the more fractured and hostile our society becomes.