I have a few questions, sorry if this sounds like a lot I’m just really curious.
What city are you in where this happens? What are you doing to provoke this kind of behavior? Why haven’t you moved away to somewhere safer?
> What are you doing to provoke this kind of behavior?
Standing on the sidewalk, hanging out with friends.
> Why haven’t you moved away to somewhere safer?
I left when I was 18.
I'd be happy to entertain any additional questions you or others might have.
Would you happen to know why gangs would bother doing random acts of violence against teenagers standing on the sidewalk? I'd heard that the Italian mafia at least likes to keep themselves out of the public eye, interesting that other gangs don't.
They have literal games , such as "knockout". The game is literally to come from behind and hit a random passerby so hard that they fall on the ground... knocked out.
Its some real messed up stuff. I am sure you google.
Driving, riding my bike, walking. When I was a kid simply walking to school was enough. But people will threaten to shoot you for turning, not driving fast enough, merging, stopping, not stopping. Riding a bike in the right lane.
Growing up down here you get used to it. Far too many Americans have access to guns. Hopefully, they only use it on themselves. But even if only 1% of gun owners were certifiable crazy, that's still over a 1 million unhinged individuals.
I moved to Europe for a time. But career and family brought me back here. And I like money :-)
Guns are illegal.
Still, plenty of shootings and killings from random roadrage incidents.
And also obviously it happens frequently in SF from the homeless people. That is probably more worrying as they potentially have "nothing to lose"
Once the border officer asked me (or rather - barked at me) "why are you coming to the US?", to what I said "for business".
"For how long?" - to what I answered "for 3 days"
He then asks "why so short?" to what I answered "I swear if I could squeeze it to one day I would gladly come and go not to spend money in a country that is so welcoming" (it was a very long, tiring flight and I really wanted to go to the hotel, afer having queued up for 2 hours)
He told me that I should not reply like this, to what I said that this is the truth. We had a small staring contest and he let me go.
The other similar case in Russia was when the border guard was yelling at me for not having my passport number printed on my ticket (yes, I do not know either), to which I yelled back to kick me out of their country with a "never return" stamp because I am fed up enough to have a week-end ruined with tha travel. I showed him my hands together (as in "handcuff me") and he pushed me into Russia. The stay was great, people were great.
This is what greeted my family every time we came to the US. Which fucked up ICE agent will we get this time? Most of them were pleasant but it only takes 1 asshole in the bunch to ruin a great holiday.
And no matter what they say, Canada's ICE weren't much better.
Semi-relevant anecdote: I was traveling in my car with my mom and sister to Vancouver BC from Seattle (back when I was not a US citizen yet). Canadian officer at the border was more than just inquisitive. He asked who i was, where i worked, which team i worked on, what specific product I worked on and what specifically I did (which was already making me feel uncomfortable, because the product wasn't public back then, so I wasn't really allowed to talk about it in general). The questioning itself took like 10 mins and was absolutely unnecessary. Not even mentioning how aggressive he was, I felt like I was an inch away from being escorted to their "office" for additional questioning. And I am saying that as someone who doesn't usually feel threatened much by any interactions with officers.
On the way back into the US, however, it was buttery smooth. The officer confiscated the grapes my mother tried bringing back with her (despite me urging her not to do so), and he was extremely apologetic about it. Then he said "welcome home", and that was it. Took less than a minute overall.
Not trying to generalize anything from this, as, of course, the experiences differ wildly between individual border officers and such. I just thought it was an interesting semi-relevant anecdote.
I was driving from a town in Illinois to Toronto (a very long 10 hour trip as it was). Got to the border, they said that I needed to pay several thousands dollars to import my car because according to them I was a "returning resident" even though I kept saying I work in US and was going to return to US (and had paperwork to prove it, to boot). Nope. They kept insisting I was lying about the purpose of my trip, and eventually decided that because I was "lying", they were going to seize my car (and everything in it, including laptops and cellphones).
They then proceeded to tell me I had to pay $14k to get my car back (or to find a cab willing to come to the border. Without a cell phone. At midnight on a sunday.) Did I mention I had my wife and two children in the car with me? Yeah.
So I ended up scrambling to come up with $14k by maxing out multiple credit cards, got my car and belongings back, and finally got our asses out of there at 2am (with still 3 hours of road ahead of me).
I knew the border officers were full of shit so I filed a formal appeal with the government. Six months later, what do you know, it was actually reviewed and it was determined that the border officers were in fact in the wrong and that I should get a full refund. Better late than never, but boy, that night couldn't have gone much worse.
Shouldn't be surprising that their staff follows the same principles that created the agency in the first place.
Customer service takes a nose dive once you train your staff on how to spot the next shoebomber.
Officer (in a rather rude tone): "what were you doing in Canada?"
Me (sleepy and a bit disoriented): "sorry?"
Officer (suddenly seems to realize that he has my green card in front of him): "Never mind, you're good to go"
My best guess is that he was just too conditioned to grasp at straws for reasons to give people a hard time, until realizing he couldn't deny entry to a green card holder.