Whadayaknow! I got pinched again, last night, by the man. this time for running a red light. It wasn’t quite my fault since I was just following the guy in front of me and it happened to turn red while i was going through the intersection. Marcia, Dad and I were talking about where to grab a cappucino and dessert, after having arrived too late for a showing of CLOSER. Finding good coffee and dessert in Vallarta is like searching for the holy grail. ok, back to the red light. yeah, if we are talking technicalities here, yes, i ran the red light. But that doesn’t mean the policia had to pull me over, but they did. This time I pretended that I’ve only been here for a month and that I didn’t know very much spanish. He talked to me about the infraction and that he’d have to take my license and then I’d have to go down on monday to pay the fine and get the card back. I pretended not to understand what he was saying. He then asked who was with me and when I told him Marcia was from Guadalajara, he asked to have her come speak with him. So I walked back to the truck, asked Marcia to come speak with the cop and I quickly told her about the white lie of having only been here for a month. Luckily the cop was not paying attention, that would never have been possible in the states. Anyways, the cop basically told her the same thing he told me and then she motioned to me to try to see if there was “anything we can do to keep the license” this is code talk for “can we slip you a mickey and let’s just forget about this little meeting”. the cop instantly complied and asked that we get back into the car, before we slip him the dinero. We got in the truck, slipped him 200 pesos (20 bucks), he gave the license back and we were on our way.
This time I’m not really sure if he was doing me a favor or not. I really think he took the opportunity to squeeze me, just because he could. If my California license plated truck had been a Jalisco plated car, he probably wouldn’t have even bothered. So in that respect it pissed me off. But assuming that I had made the error, legitimately, he did do me (and him) a favor by accepting the dough. Yes, he didn’t really have to pull me over, but I did run the light. So in the states that would have been a healthy fine, but here the cop takes your license and then you have to come down to the station on another day to get your license back and pay 40 dollar fine. So technically, the cop saved me time and money and he saved himself some paperwork and got some good spending money out of it.
