I got held at the (utterly empty otherwise) border for 40 minutes. They went through my whole backpack (just wet stinking climbing clothing equipment), did some obscure exercises like taking out all my cash & cards from wallet, counting it, putting into envelope and then back to me and so on.

I was super thirsty, when I asked them for a cup of water they repeatedly ignored it. They yelled at me and were generally super unfriendly, treating me like a criminal. I cross normally (non-covid times) that border several times a week, never anything similar. You can't do much, they have all the power, and they make you feel it.

This is Swiss, don't hold your breath for other european places. There are sane normal policemen, just like everywhere, but there are also fucked up power tripping assholes. They just can be more trigger-happy in places like US.

I got stopped while entering the US, they asked me to follow them in some kind of room, I did, they asked me for my passport, I gave it to them, they then put the passport on a table and went chatting on the other side of the room, a few minute later a woman came in and took the passport while no one was paying attention. 5 min later one of the chatting officer noticed the passport was missing and tried to make me confess I took it back from the table and hid it, he was very obviously trying to escalate the situation... The woman came back after a while and the threatening officer tried to pass his whole act as a joke. I lost 2 hours because these people were less organised than an elementary school kid and treated me like a criminal for no reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...

United States is between Congo and Iraq when sorted by rate per 10 mil. people.

The first european country is way down that list.