This TED Talk features Justice Investigator Salil Doudani, recorded live at TEDx Stanford, 2016.

One summer afternoon in 2013, D.C. Police detained, questioned, and searched a man who appeared suspicious and potentially dangerous.

This wasn't what I was wearing the day of the detention, to be fair, but I have a picture of that as well.

I know it's very frightening. I try to remain calm.

At this time, at this time I was interning at the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C.,

and I was visiting a police station for work.

I was on my way out, and before I could make it to my car,

two police cars pulled up to block my exit,

and an officer approached me from behind.

He told me to stop, take my backpack off,

and put my hands on the police car, parked next to us.

About a dozen officers then gathered near us.

All of them had handguns, some had assault rifles.

They rifled through my backpack.

They patted me down.

They took pictures of me spread on the police car, and they laughed.

And as all this was happening, as me spread on the police car, and they laughed. And as all this was

happening, as I was on the police car, trying to ignore the shaking in my legs, trying to think

clearly about what I should do, something stuck out to me as odd. When I look at myself in this photo,

if I were to describe myself, I think I'd say something like 19-year-old Indian male, bright t-shirt, wearing glasses.

But they weren't including any of these details.

Into their police radios, as they described me, they kept saying Middle Eastern male with a backpack.

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