Cambodian Police...

We have heard stories of the corruption in Cambodia from day one, but my second week here I got to experience it first hand. I had rented a moto and was driving in line with 2 other students from my group and another girl in our group who speaks Khmer was riding with me. We came to a red light with a no u-turn sign. Since no one obeys the traffic laws in this country, the first guy in our group waited until the light turned green and then made an illegal u-turn. I proceeded to turn correctly and go around the corner where I could turn around. I came back to the same intersection, the light was green, and I made a right turn. Shortly after a policeman walked into the middle of the road cutting of my path and got me to pull over. I saw the other student ahead of me had been pulled over as well.

Right away I was confused. I was asking the police officer what I did wrong and he tried to say I made the same u-turn. It was ridiculous; I had come from the other direction. I said no way and he then tried to say that I went through a red light. I once again told him I didn't. I don't know if they just think no one here pays attention or what but this is literally how the conversation was going. I told him the light was green. From where he was standing in the road he honestly couldn't even see it. He then had the other police officer come over and talk to me instead because I was arguing with them so much. The other police officer (who had pulled over my friend and been talking to him when I drove up so he didn't even see me) without talking to the police officer that pulled me offer when through the same list of things I supposedly did wrong. First saying I made the illegal U-turn and then claiming the light was red. Finally he said that the light was green but I just couldn't go through it at that time. How ridiculous. It was a right turn on green and the stoplights here are all arrows and it showed that you could go straight or right.

I had been warned that this is what the police do. They pull you over because they see that you are white. Apparently Khmer drivers don't even stop for them, they just keep going because they know how ridiculous the police officers are. We were warned in our security briefing though that sometimes this makes the police angry and they will then radio ahead to other officers on a different corner who will just grab people off their motos then while the moto is still going. So the option to just outrun them definitely has a downside.

I tried telling the police that I worked for the UN and I didn't do anything wrong and they couldn't pull me over for nothing. The guy asked me for money. He said if I paid him it could all go away. I said isn't that illegal and he just laughed. The corruption here is so blatant. The police don't even try to hide that's all they want from you. Sometimes they try to get $100 from people who did nothing at all. The worst part is that even if you pay one police officer, there is nothing to stop you from getting pulled over two blocks down. I have heard stories of people getting pulled over up to 5 times in one day. It's just ridiculous. Apparently people have been pulled over with no money on them and the police have walked them to ATM's and made them withdraw cash.

I was pissed about the fact that he asked me for a bribe and the fact that I had even been pulled over in the first place. I made the extra effort to not run the light and go about it the right way to try and follow the law and it didn't even matter. I finally agreed to give him $2 to let me go but told them I would be back to talk to them. I was livid. I get that in the grand scheme of things $2 for me shouldn't be a big deal. But the principle behind it all drives me nuts. This is a country where I could eat 3 meals for that amount of money. Where many families spend less than that in a single day. So while $2 for some American student or other foreigner shouldn't be a big deal, the principle of pulling people over and making them fork over cash, even $2, is a huge problem. I understand that a country needs to have traffic laws and those that don't obey them need to have some sort of penalty instilled, but I was pulled over for doing nothing wrong! And this happens to people everyday. The police just pull over whoever they can trap into stopping and make up violations until the people get so frustrated they agree to pay them.

I parted with my friends who had been on their way to the grocery store and I went home to get the contact cards that I had for the head of UN security and the Chief of Staff of the Cambodian National police (who I had met the day before).

I pulled up to the cops and was pissed. I got out the cards and handed them to the guys (the cards are in both English and Khmer) I then stuck out my hand and told them to give me back my $2. They both just looked at the cards for the longest times and then kept looking back at me. The one with better English got pissed, pulled the money out of his pocket, handed it to me and said here. Now you stay. They said if I didn't want to pay then I had to wait there. I threatened to call the numbers on the cards and he told me to go ahead, they wouldn't understand me because I didn't speak Khmer. I told him I met the police yesterday and he speaks perfect English. He told me go ahead and call. I might have even called, problem was I had a cell phone but I had just ran out of minutes and didn't have a way. I tried explaining them that I couldn't. He was pissed and wouldn't let me go. He called me out on it. They kept trying to grab my moto and push me up on the sidewalk but I wouldn't budge. I was warned that once they get you up on the sidewalk you are screwed, they will keep you all day. I kept trying to talk to them and explain but he said, you don't pay then you wait. They wouldn't talk to me. All of a sudden a guy who spoke great English said he didn't know English and couldn't understand me. It was ridiculous. I kept telling them to tell me what I did wrong or let me go. He just said you wait. I would try and start my bike to drive away and they would grab me and try to take my keys. I kept guarding them, knowing that if they took them I would never get out of there. I got so frustrated and mad at myself. I should have just let it go but was so angry about the injustice, the fact that I did nothing wrong, angry with myself for agreeing to bribe him in the first place. I didn't know what to do. After about 20 minutes I offered to just give back the money if they would let me go. He said no way. I didn't know what to do. I was not he side of the road on a busy street, stranded. I told them to just arrest me and held out my hands. He just looked the other way. I kept asking them how long I had to stay, all he would do was yell wait at me and try to push me to the sidewalk.

I finally just started yelling to random people on the street asking if anyone spoke English and could help me. People just looked at me. They all knew the situation that I was in and that there was nothing that could be done. Finally an American man on a bicycle stopped to ask me what the trouble was. Thankfully he spoke Khmer. It took him about 15 minutes of negotiation but he was able to get me out of there if I gave the guy the money back. He said the same thing had happened to him his first week in Cambodia and he got upset too but after awhile he just gave in and thought of it as paying taxes in Cambodia. I don't know what I would have done without him.

I haven't been pulled over since but still don't know how to handle it if I was. I get that the way it is done here is just to pay them and move on. I also get that I'm in another country and I shouldn't just come in with this expectation that things should be the same and decide that if they are different they are wrong. I get that I need to adapt. But morally I still have a line that needs to be drawn. Maybe I picked the wrong time to enter the battle, but at that point I just thought even if I only give them $2 this one time, I'm still doing something I don't ever want to do. So ya it was just $2 one time, but what did it say about me. How would succumbing to something that I found so detestable ever help. How does committing a wrong help you stand up and fight against it?

Thankfully I haven't been put in this situation again. I'm still not sure how I will react or how I should react. Part of me really feels like the best thing I can do is just let them keep me on the side of the road until they get annoyed and let me go. I have tried to ask so many people here what the actual appropriate system is for traffic violations. In the U.S. if you get a ticket you don't agree with you are able to challenge it somewhere. But here there is no system in place to disagree. You pay the money they want from you or you sit and wait. There are no tickets, no procedures. Just bribes. Apparently it is legal for them to "fine" you on the spot but not in excess of 5,000 riels ($1.25 U.S.). The problem is that no one here knows the laws, not even the police. So even if you tried to call them on it they wouldn't believe you. And you can't explain anything to anyone because when Khmer people don't feel like talking to you they just pretend to not understand what you are saying. We actually had a tuk tuk driver the other night try to tell us he was Indian because a girl in our group started negotiating with him in Khmer and he didn't want to negotiate.

I get that I'm only here for a couple of weeks and my mother is going to kill me if I end up in jail over here because of something so small. But I'm still really bothered by this whole situation and struggling with how to cope over this one.