Close Encounters of the Despicable Kind

Just yesterday, I had a taste of how corrupt some of our traffic enforcers have become. Ho-hum, some of you might say, as this is not actually an earth-shaking news. If a librarian were to classify and catalogue "Corruption in the Police Ranks", he or she would probably put it under the General Information category. This is what happened.

Yesterday, at around 4 pm, I received a distress call from a friend. At around 10 am, he and his wife were on their way to the church when they were bumped off along Katipunan Ave. The rear of their one-year old Honda Civic was badly damaged. The wife, who was behind the wheels, had a student driving license while the husband had a non-professional license. Apparently, a truck was following closely behind them and when the wife made a sudden stop in an intersection to give way to a crossing passenger jeepney, their car was hit by the trailing truck.

After the church service, the couple went immediately to a nearby police station to file a complaint. They related to the police officer manning the desk the whole incident. The police officer then made it known to them that they had no chance of getting paid by the insurance company since the wife who was driving had only a student license (the estimated damage costs about P150,000.00). The police officer then said that he could make it appear on records that it was the husband who was driving, but for a price. ""Magkano ba ang budget ninyo (how much is your budget)?", he asked. The couple understood it right away that the police officer was asking for a grease money. The adamant couple said no, went back to UP and waited until another police officer would be manning the desk.

I was already with them when they back at around 5 pm. To their dismay, it was still the same officer who was on the desk. They had no choice but to talk to him again. The police officer again explained to them that he could make it appear that the husband was driving but they had to "talk." "Pag-uusapan natin," the police officer told them with a straight face. Although I was there just to accompany my friends, I got pissed off and asked the police officer, "Ano ang gusto mong pag-uusapan?, just what exactly do you want to talk about?"

To the credit of my good friends, they didn't budge in. The wife said, "if it's the price we have to pay for telling the truth, then so be it." When the police officer sensed that the couple was not taking the bait, he then told them to transfer to another table and to talk another police officer. They were finally given a form to fill up and were told to return at 10 am today to pick up the documents they had just filed.

I wrote down the name of the thick-faced police officer and said, "Tommorow I'm going make an entry in my blog and I'll write about this," in a loud voice. Of course I didn't say any such thing and it would be a terrible abuse on my part to tell everyone that it was a police officer with initials... that tried to extort money from my friends, so I won't.


N.B. Just a minute ago, I received an obviously irked text message again from the couple. They went back to the police station today to pick up their documents but were told to return tommorow afternoon since their papers are not yet processed.