A long time ago - maybe 1986 or so - I tried to pass a counterfeit £20 bill.
I didn't know it was counterfeit. At the time, I wasn't exactly Peter Thiel and such huge bills (to me) only came my way when I got my weekly wage out of the bank.
The store didn't believe a bank (it was a Giro bank, British folks) would hand out fake notes, and the police, when they arrived, didn't believe me either. I was marched out of the store and deposited on a hard bench in a East London police station. The copper said that Special Branch or whomever would be along to question me, but nobody bothered. About an hour later, the original copper came by with his cup of tea in his hand, and said, "Are you still here?" I allowed as I was, in fact, still here, and he indicated I should get lost.
I did. I got back to work, they accepted my excuse for having taken such a prolonged lunch break, and that was that.
None of the police involved handcuffed my hands behind my back and knelt on my neck for more than eight minutes, killing me.
So I guess I got off lightly compared with George Floyd, God rest his soul. The East London police were pretty hard - the Giro bank post office where I deposited my paycheck was just opposite the Blind Beggar where Ronnie Kray murdered George Cornell, for example, so they had to be - but they weren't psychopaths.
