Emirates Police Force…

I think I like the ticket police the best. They seem to be the most enthusiastic about their jobs. I was once parked directly outside of Rashidiya Police station for one of the many day trips I got to make there, courtesy of my X husband. I was talking on the phone smoking a cigarette when this plump little man in a green suit, carrying his ticket book walked out of the precinct.

Are they called precincts, here?

Anyway, his smile grew as he walked towards my car and tapped on the windows. He was going to write his first ticket of the day just seconds after his shift started! Imagine the nerve of some western bimbo parking her 100% tinted, complete with windshield car outside the police station!

Since I’ve been told they have a minimum requirement for number of tickets in a day, his utter disgust and complete lack of recognition as he threw my license and registration back at me; without writing a ticket, didn’t come as a shock. I can even admire the will he had to actually do his job, something that’s seemingly only apparent on the ticket writers, here.

Years back, I was in the midst of another legal battle with one of the many psychos I’ve come across in the UAE. In the midst of one of my many, many trips to the Rifaa police station I got to see a full-fledge comedy play out in front of my eyes.

Picture this; my mother and I are sitting in some captain’s office, patiently waiting for him to resolve a labor-dispute between an Asian labor worker, his brother, and his Asian employer. The three of them were shouting simultaneously in a mixture of languages; Arabic, Hindi & English. From what I understood, the labor worker hadn’t been paid for more than eight months, and the employer wanted to sue him for not showing up at work during the past week; which evidently cost the company money.

After the three had screamed continuously for more than 15 minutes, the captain finally interrupted them, “Ok. Ok. You know what you have to do?”

All of them fell silent, waiting for the big authority to give them some sort of judgment.

“Go back to your office. It’s not far from here.”

All of them nodded, waiting for him to continue.

“Pick up your telephone, and dial 999.”

Well I’ll be dammed. They actually did as he instructed. All three of them left the police department silently, to go back to their office and call emergency over a labor dispute.

This isn’t the first bazaar display of law enforcement I’ve seen here. Maybe the first one was when I was just a teen. I was arrested in Sharjah, and accused of drug-dealing. I was just 14 or 15 years old; and though my companion may very well have been committing the said crime neither one of us ended up behind bars.

What’s amusing about this story is the fact that after hours and hours of psychological interrogation and I assure you, they know what they’re doing, and severely beating the fuck out of my male companions feet, and finally realizing we weren’t going to confess or give them urine samples, they decided to let us go. But before they did, I had to write a paper stating I would be good to my parents, do well in school and stay out of trouble in the first place.

**I might mention here, that regardless of my pleas, the CID captain and all of his staff refused to let me call my parents, and they didn’t let us go until near 11pm that night.

Later, I learned what I wrote was translated to Arabic, only not a single word in the Arabic script which stated I promised not to associate with the said companion again, was actually written in English.

How’s that for competence?

Moving on, I was again arrested years back in Rashidiya for driving without a license. Actually, the rookie decided to follow my best friend and I home because he assumed we were prostitutes.

It was after 3am and we were two girls driving alone. The truth is, we simply got bored of sitting in my house in Jumeirah and decided to go to her house in Mirdiff. Anyway, we ran into the house ignoring the civilian looking police car, and told her brother that we were being followed by strange guys. (None of the officers were in uniform, though we half knew they were police seeing how they kept flashing their badges at us while we were driving.)

Her brother went outside to talk and they asked for the driver. Being the twat he was, he called us out. I couldn’t provide a license; and funny enough the only one my friend had was an American one that expired 10 years before. They took us to the police station, and there we sat making friends with all the officers, while the rookie fought to press some sort of charges.

Around 7am the shifts change, the night staff gets replaced with the day staff. By that time 90% of the police station was fighting with the rookie to let us go. Finally, he gave in, but not without threatening to open a case against his colleagues for forcing him into it. I never did hear anything about that future case, I suppose it was all words.

So they agreed to let us go but first, I needed to show them some sort of picture ID to verify who I was. My passport was with my father’s office for visa or something like that, and I didn’t own anything else. Eventually, they accepted my Canadian social insurance card; which normally doesn’t have a photo, only for that occasion, in front of all the kind police men we stuck a sticker picture of my friend and I on the right corner.

After getting over their confusion and humbled laughs, and probably not wanting to spend anymore time at work than they had to, they let us go. The sticker is still there on my card.

I don’t know of any other country where law enforcement would 1) make such an assumption about a girl simply because she’s driving at night, or 2) let a law-breaker go without punishment or even proof of his or her identity.

But that Dubai for ya…

Next issue: RAS AL KHAIMAH courts. There’s a fun memory, I’m itching to share.