It’s 8pm on the Kilburn High Road in London. I have just had a dubious fried chicken and chips for £1.29 from ‘Perfect Fried Chicken’ with friends. On our way to spend yet another whole night at the local Shisha café, we stumble upon a school friend being stopped by the police.

“We have ‘reasonable’ grounds to believe that you are in possession of illegal drugs.”

Having dealt with the police before, I informed them that I was hoping to read Law at Cambridge. I asked: “Are you within your powers under Section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act? Are you absolutely sure that your grounds are not unreasonable as defined in the case of Wednesbury?” 

To cut a long story short, I laid the legal jargon on thick; suddenly, they had an ‘unexpected call’ and aborted their stop and search. 

After that, I didn’t go to the shisha café. I went home. I went home and made 100 pocket-sized cards with information on our stop and search laws, which I gave out in school the next day. It was then that I decided that I would take on the police. 

I teamed up with the local youth club, had professional cards on stop and search laws made, and taught people about their legal rights regarding searches, arrest and questioning. The police in the local area came to hate me; indeed, I was slapped by a police officer one night. 

Now that I have left London and reflect on my defiance fondly, I have learned a few lessons. The first is that, in my opinion, the Metropolitan Police is a disgraceful and corrupt police force. 

More importantly, I believe the police force is an institution which takes advantage of ignorance, poor education and the post-9/11 hyperactive fear of crime. 

In a report on stop and search, the Equality and Human Rights Commission said that young black men were 29 times more likely to be searched as compared to their white counterparts. 

Our prisons are filled to the brim with young black men and women. I have seen it for myself. Ethnic minorities are among the poorest in the UK. I went to one of the poorest schools in the country; white students were the minority. 90 per cent of the school were Asian, Middle Eastern, Black or Eastern European, notably Kosovans who fled the Serbian genocide. More than half were on free school meals. 

Why does that matter? It matters because the police capitalise on this ignorance and poor education. Big words like ‘legislation’, ‘obligation’, ‘rationality’, ‘resistance’ and ‘delegated’ are scary. Most people on the Kilburn High Road wouldn’t understand those words. But the police use them, and they do so knowingly to induce fear in the community. There isn’t much a 17 year-old from Nigeria can say when an officer tells him that 'in line with statutory provision, as prescribed by Parliament, (he) is to be searched’. 

As well as taking advantage of ignorance, the police thrive on the hyperactive fear of crime created after 9/11. Suddenly, national security is the be all and end all. It’s acceptable to waterboard a suspected terrorist if it’s in the name of national security. It’s acceptable to detain indefinitely suspected terrorists in the UK without telling them why. Therefore, it’s absolutely acceptable to stop a random youth and search them for a bit of the green stuff. Clearly not. 

But this ghastly view is accepted as the gospel truth by people up and down the country. The police exacerbate this fear through scaremongering tactics. Again, our old friend – the reality-perception dichotomy – comes into play. 

But that 17 year-old boy from Nigeria knows why he is being wronged. The thing is, he can’t tell you why. However, while he probably won't have the means to file a judicial review claim, he will find other ways to protest: violence. 

The abhorrent killing of Mark Duggan in the summer of 2011, which sparked riots up and down the country, proves this. The recent events in Ferguson do, too. Black communities are facing disproportionate police force. It is expected and justified that they will retaliate at such persecution. 

As with most other ‘isms’, though, the issue at hand is far more structural. The police have powers to stop and search if they have ‘reasonable’ grounds to do so – if the ‘reasonable man’ would have done so. The courts tell us that this is an objective test; the ‘reasonable man’ is the “man on the Clapham omnibus”. He is a ‘legal fiction’. Let’s call him Percy. 

But when Lord Bowen conceived the "man on the Clapham omnibus" in the 19th century, he was not thinking entirely in the abstract; the Percy he imagined sitting on the route from Knightsbridge to Clapham was white, middle-class, and well educated. It is likely that Percies up an down the country would have also stopped my school friend if they were police officers, but Percy is simply ignorant to the trials and tribulations of working-class life. Percy doesn’t know how to get his hands on six chicken wings and chips for £1.29. Put simply, Percy is divorced from reality. 

Look all around you – college grounds, the Sidgwick site or the smoking area at Life. Do you ever fear that your freedom might be (temporarily) suspended? It is likely that you have just answered 'no' to that question. Black teens, however, answer differently; they walk the streets of London fearing – indeed expecting – a stop and search. 

This is indefensible. And that is why I took on and will continue to take on the police.