Don's Costa Rican run in with the law

This picture was taken with our first run in with these policia on June 24th. Don's mom came to visit for a week, and she was flying into San Jose. San Jose is not exactly close to where we are staying, the Liberia airport is much, much closer, but we had no idea what area we would be in when she booked her flight. San Jose is central and cheaper to fly into so that was the best option at the time. The shuttle she was trying to arrange from the San Jose airport to us didn't work out, so we drove the 4.5 hours to San Jose to pick her up. We rented a car to go pick her up, and about 45 minutes or so into the drive I asked Don if he had grabbed the copies of the passports. You don't really have to carry your passport on you, as long as you have a photocopy with the stamp that you've entered the country, you are pretty much ok. Of course as soon as I asked the question I had jinxed us, because the answer was no. 30 minutes later, we are flagged down by the fine men in the picture above. One walks into the center of the road and motions for us to pull over. Shit. The first cop asked for our passport and Don said no passport. He didn't speak much, if any english. He kept repeating passporta, passporta, driver's license? Don just kept shaking his head no. Cop number one then goes to get cop number 2 that speaks english. Cop number 2 asks for passport or driver's license, and we explain that we rushed leaving and left all id (other than a credit card) in our hotel, and we were on our way to San Jose to pick up Don's mom from the airport. He shakes his head and asks where we are from and we tell him the US. He asks again for identification and we explain again that we simply forgot it. He says, "no good, this no good." He then explains that we were speeding and shows us the radar gun that says 96, and the speed limit is 60 kph. Oh and he points out that Don is not wearing his seat belt, which is also illegal. And we don't have any identification on us. "No good, no good. Very big ticket. Like $150, and I hold car.", he explains to us. He stands there shaking his head and eventaully all of us are kind of chuckling at the situation. Candler is asleep in the back seat during all of this by the way. I start digging through the glove box, hoping to find the paperwork from us renting the car as some sort of proof of who we are and thinking they might have a passport # on the paperwork. Eureka! However, no passport # and it says we are from Afghanistan. The cop takes Don out of the car and talks to him on the otherside of the road while looking over the car rental paperwork. I remind Don on his way out of the car that offering me as collateral is not in his best interst. After about 3 minutes, Don gets back in the car. What happened? Are they going to hold the car? The cops told us we could go on, but if we were pulled over by any other cops we were to play stupid and this whole thing never happened. The cop did point out that the paperwork said Afghanistan and basically laughed at that. They didn't want to have to deal with our situation, so they told us to go on.
In the beginning of this story I said the picture was of our first encounter with these cops, because on the way back they stopped us again. Same thing, we were going 96kph. Only this time we know for a fact we were not, because we knew to expect the cops to still be there. The cops come over and start to laugh, and say Mr. Clark, Mr. Clark, speeding again. Passport? They laugh again, and we say still at the hotel. They look at Don's mom and say, this is your mom, right? Don's mom is fumbling for her passport and says that she has hers. The cop then says, very big ticket, $14 and we take care of it. $14?!?!? Where the hell did $14 come from? Don's mom then pulls out a $20 and I tell her to hide that because they are just wanting a bribe, and she will not be recieving any change back. Not wanting to deal with any more, we go on and pay $15. We hand the cop $15, and he says $14, counts it, smiles, realizing we gave him $1 more and then signals for us to go on. As we pull away, Don's mom asks if we know these guys and we explain the whole story. We all just laugh at the ridiculousness.
Basically they stand on the side of the road with the radar gun set to 96kmp and pull over the white people. They say they are speeding and will offer a cash bribe on the spot to not write a ticket. First time around, we said we only had a credit card, so we couldn't exactly give them cash. If they wanted to hold the car, and take us into a station for not having our passports on us, they would have to leave and not collect any bribe money for the day. On the way back, we had Don's mom in the car, so she probably had cash and would pay. I figure the $14 came from them wanting to make a certain amount for the day and it was almost 5pm, so they were $14 short of their goal.
We've talked with several Americans or Canadians that have said if you just let them write a ticket, a) it is usally cheaper than the bribe and b) they usually just rip it up after you drive off because it is more paperwork for them to write a ticket to a non-cititizen. If we would have had our passports we would have just taken a ticket, but since we didn't want to chance it we paid the $14 bribe. Goodtimes with the law.
On a side note, there is a drug den next door to one of the bars we hang out at. Every few days or so, the cops will pull up to it for a couple of minutes, go in, and then leave. Bascially being paid to look the other way. That's pretty much the way cops work here, if they are paid, they will look the other way. Being a cop here doesn't pay that great in relation to the job, so taking bribes or working after hours as a security officer is how they make money. DUIs here are pretty much a joke, if you actually are written a ticket, it's like $50 and they don't do anything further. That's probably the reason I have heard Costa Rica is #3 in the world for alcohol realated deaths. per capita. *though I'm not sure if that is an accurate statistic or not, I've tried to find info to back that up, but havent' come up with anything yet.