Pulled Over at Night: A Young Black Officer’s Lesson in Survival

In The Know with Tony Reeves · Oct 13, 2025 · 12m

In 1996, I was a 27-year-old Black naval officer stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. One late night, I was driving home from Jacksonville along a dark, two-lane rural road — no lights, no traffic, just me and the sound of my tires against the pavement.Then I saw it — headlights, brake lights, and the unmistakable turn of a police cruiser making a U-turn behind me. In that moment, every image I had ever seen of how quickly things could go wrong for someone who looked like me came rushing to the surface. Nobody had ever given me “the talk.” I didn’t know the playbook. All I knew was that…