In 1993 or '94 I was with a friend, walking into a music store in Idaho, and had just locked the car when we saw a scantilly-clad woman walking out of the store and toward us (toward her car).  I thought i'd show off to my friend, and as we passed her i kind of smiled and said "hey!" and continued on our way into the store.

When we came back out, the woman was still standing in the parking lot, and i got nervous, thinking she was actually waiting for us.

Only a moment later we realised she was - she screamed "this is a citizen's arrest! I've called the police, and you have to stay here!"

I guess her vehicle was parked next to us, and it was a convertible with the top down ... someone had stolen her radar detector, and she assumed it was us.

The police came and started asking all sorts of questions ... we found out this woman was a police dispatcher & knew the officers who showed up - which scared me - and they asked if they could search my car.  I said "yes!" (knowing they wouldn't find anything), and one of the first things they asked me was "why is this big stick in here?"  I didn't have a good answer (i'd picked up an interesting piece of wood at the resevoir with the intent of using it as some kind of decoration in my apartment, but it looked almost like a club) ... so i had to answer multiple questions about it, and it made me feel like i was being considered crazy.

Fortunately, after about an hour the officers let us go. We received no apology from the woman (we left with the impression she was intending on some kind of 'follow up'), and we were late to work and embarrassed as a result.

The woman had jumped to conclusions because of who we were - two 'suspicious looking' teenagers ... without taking any responsibility for her own actions (leaving the top of her convertible down with valuables on the dash), and we had to suffer as a result.  This was only one of four incidents that same summer in which i was pulled over and held for long periods of time because i looked suspicious.  i was innocent each time.

eventually i moved from the area to bigger cities, and have not experienced this kind of harassment since.