In some developing countries, police are not always people to turn to for help. Their position may be more about having a license to extort and rob, than it is to enforce the law and be helpful to its
citizens.
We discovered this the hard way, when we were living in Guatemala. We rented a scooter and were riding to the other side of Lake Atitlan, to a romantic weekend getaway in Santiago. We were told by local people that if you go one way around the lake, you will surely get robbed, so we went the safe way. It’s true, we weren’t robbed by road pirates, instead we were robbed by the robber-catchers. How special are we?
Half way to Santiago we came over the crest of a hill, and a policeman saw our gringoness approaching and jumped into the middle of the road, waving us to pull over. We got off the bike, he asked for our cell phones and made sure we didn’t get any reception. They obviously knew were
the lack of reception pockets were, and did their hold-ups in that area. That’s when we knew this wasn’t good. He said we didn’t have the proper license to drive on that road, we showed them our rental papers and told them the rental guy said we were fine to go around the lake. Then the police
said, no, you don’t have permission to go on this part of the road, which is ours. Oh, we get it now. All I could think was, I am not going to get my camera stolen for the 4th time.
They said they could issue us a special license for a fee. How lucky were we that they has special license issuing privileges just when we needed one. We asked for how much, they asked how much we had. We settled on 300q, which is a lot in Guatemalan terms but about $45. It was enough to keep them from rooting around our stuff and taking my camera, ultimately a bargain, as far as armed robberies go.
We could hear them laughing at us as we drove away, calling us wonderful, flattering names in Spanish. I remember thinking, that’s good that they are happy because they’ll be less likely to shoot me in the back. I was tempted to wave my Nikon over my head and yell, “Suckahs!!”
When we got back to town we told our expat friends. They laughed their heads off that we gave them so much. Said the cops would have been happy with 30q, a tenth of what we forked over. They asked if there was a tree across the road as a road block and we said no. Then they laughed and asked why we pulled over in the first place. Because where we come from, you pull your butt over when a police stops you. Apparently not where we were living in Guatemala. They said when a cop tries to pull them over, they just look the other way like they didn’t see him and accelerate. They won’t shoot at you, and who knows if those guns even work. That seemed like some crazy advice (and not advice I’m giving), because, what if the guns do work?
Little did we know we’d be able to put their advice to the test sooner than later. A few days passed and we were riding the scooter in a town close to ours called Solola. All of a sudden a cop jumped out between two parked cars and tried to get us to stop. We accelerated and blew around him, all the while I’m yelling, “Go faster, go, go, GO! Then we were sneaking around the streets trying to avoid him and headed home down some backstreets. Felt like a couple of bank robbers on the run, and I’m hanging off the bike going, “Wooohooo suckah!!!” Maybe it wasn’t all that mature, but it sure felt good.
Best advice we can give, is to talk to people who have lived in your area for a long time, and have perspective on whether the local police are law enforcers or law breakers. These long time residents will give you the best advice on how to deal with the armed men in uniforms.