Skip to Content  Dealing with the Police  Your rating: None
Average: 3 (1 vote) 25 January, 2009  Mexican police are much
different from their counterparts to the North. In truth, they
are generally more laid back and friendly. They take themselves
-- and you -- less seriously, and, in the main, they are less
meddlesome and authoritarian than the average patrolman or state
trooper in the States or Canada.  Naturally, there are
exceptions, and a lot depends on who YOU are and HOW you are
conducting yourself. In the past, police shake downs were
reported from time to time, usually a routine stop in which the
subject was threatened with arrest unless he or she paid a
“fine” on the spot. The amount of the fine was coincidentally
the same amount as the currency the subject was carrying. Part
of the problem was drug use by individual police. Though the
officers are subject to drug testing, the police unions and the
bureaucracy made it difficult to clean out the drug users, who
needed to supplement their salaries wi