Police check and attempted corruption

Written by Bénédicte Desforges, on Police, March 18th 2009.
Translated by Sophie Balaguer. See the original article in French
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Photo: Rama, Wikimedia Commons

We were checking cars along an avenue broad enough for us to make two or three cars park without obstructing traffic. Each of us was taking care of their own car and driver, it was quite a routinely task being performed in an almost mechanical way. Driver’s license, car registration, insurance certificate, when everything was in order, the audit was fast. Sometimes a little reminder to fasten seat belts, and of course some tickets when necessary.

So I was checking the papers of a motorist when my attention focused on my colleague who was checking the car he had stopped a few meters ahead of me. He was surprisingly still, arms hanging down in front of the window. Not moving at all as if he was petrified, not speaking either, and looking completely dazed.

I stepped aside, still holding the papers and my tickets book, trying to see and understand the situation. I saw his caret shaped eyebrows and his eyes staring inside the car, and a fuzzy worry grabbed me. Immediately followed by a silent anguish.

In a split second, my imagination developed a whole series of horrific scenarios. The driver was dead. There was a dead man beside the driver. There was something scary in the car, perhaps an animal. To put my colleague in this state of cataplexy, it had to be a reptile, a huge reptile. Or maybe he was feeling faint, standing, struck down by some kind of a crippling crisis, and he was going to collapse like a puppet.

Or he was being threatened, quietly, underhand, by a weapon I could not see. And it is this hunch that imposed itself on my mind when I started walking slowly toward the car, heart pounding, and my hand on the grip.

It was crucial for the driver not to see me and I managed to move in the blind spot of the rear-view mirror. My colleague was still staring and looking dazed, and he did not see me. And I still could not see the driver because of reflections on the glass, and I dared not speak to my colleague for fear of triggering who-knows-what.

And then I ended up seeing. A surprising scene that I never would have expected to witness one day… A woman, with her skirt pulled high on her legs, was fondling her thigh with an expert hand in a back and forth movement.

“Aaaaah !” I shouted. Both of them jumped as if a shell had fallen between them, and my colleague gave me the look of someone who had just been woken up with a bucket of cold water.

“Uh … She has no car insurance…” he said in a voice that sounded like a meow.
- Really? No car insurance? And attempting to defraud the public purse? ”

She had indeed attempted a seduction manoeuvre, the “mister officer, arrangements can be made” kind. It happens sometimes. And she had almost succeeded. Almost…

“Hey, could you please go get my tickets book in the car parked over there? I threw it on the dashboard by mistake, and I kept his papers. You can go without fear, it’s not a trap.”

And I started it all up from the beginning with her.

“Hello ma’am, police. Can you show me the vehicle’s papers, please?”
Moments and some gnashing of teeth later, she again raised her skirt, but this time in order to crouch behind her car to clean her car plate.