A few days ago, I walked up to a café outside Derechos Humanos metro station.
To my surprise, there was some small event being held of mostly foreigners near that metro.
Perhaps I say “to my surprise” because I didn’t have to travel to Roma Norte or Condesa this time.
A little bit closer.
At any rate, it was nothing more than some public event mentioned on a meetup website for people to meet new people and maybe make friends or whatever.
A simple chat at some café and that’s it.
When I got there, I saw maybe like 10 other foreigners at the little event?
Roughly 10 more or less.
Some who seemingly didn’t know Spanish very well when ordering and others who did that could help out with that.
And the nationalities?
Most North American (American and Canadian) with a few Europeans and 1 Japanese chick.
How come Japanese gals are always so cute?
At any rate, the little gathering was nothing more than just having coffee and tea, basic introductions and chit chat about life in Mexico.
Nothing more.
During the basic chit chat, stories started coming out with one in particular that really stood out.
Long story short…
Well, there was a Canadian dude from BC area who had a rough first week living in Condesa a few months ago.
He was going to some Christmas event full of foreigners to have a good time at some house party and, after the event was over, headed to his apartment nearby at around midnight or so.
During his brief walk home, he heard someone yelling out at him and looked behind him to see some cop vehicle driving slowly behind him.
The dude stopped.
Two cops came out.
And they did an immediate “stop and frisk” by placing the dude against the vehicle and searching his pockets.
Asking him in broken English “Drugs? You drugs?”
No drugs found.
Then they began asking him other questions like “if he is legal” and other things he supposedly didn’t understand.
In his words, he described it as seemingly two dudes getting aggressive with him right away and speaking to him in broken English with him only kinda understanding what they wanted based on a few words they pronounced right.
Mixed in with a bunch of other gibberish that was either Spanish and/or maybe piss poor pronunciation of other English words.
At any rate, the dude in question only had his phone on him and no wallet (just some minor change of, in his words, “like 250 pesos or something”).
Which, for those who don’t know, is roughly like 12 bucks.
So it wasn’t like he had much to give them when the time came for that.
And, to be fair to the reader, I wasn’t there either.
This is all just “heard a story, reporting it here for those curious.”
I say that because it’s at this point that I’m not really sure what the hell happened.
If the dude was omitting any details for what he might’ve said to the police or whatever.
Which isn’t to justify their behavior but only admitting that this is the part of the story that seems slightly weird to me as I don’t know if anything else happened to change the mood of the cops.
Because, for whatever reason, the story cuts to “the cops got agitated.”
And, to cut to the chase, one of the cops accuses the dude of having drugs and pulls out some drug (I didn’t ask what drug it was but I’m guessing pot or cocaine).
Either way, the dude ended the story with saying that he lost out on his cash as a bribe and they let him go.
Of course, this is probably just an abridged version of what happened.
A lot of details not mentioned in his story as we all forget details here and there from time to time.
And it would’ve been interesting to be watching from above to see how this happened as I’ve never been accused of drugs before by the cops.
Though, as you can read here, I have had moments having to bribe them in Mexico before.
Still, there’s a few things to be said here.
For one, it’s interesting this story happened around Christmas time.
As I wrote here, November and December tend to be hunting season for cops looking for bribes given they’re losers who can’t make money an honest way and need that extra 50 bucks to afford a nice night with their motel mistress.
Additionally, many have been saying that these incidents have been getting worse since Covid started.
It was a prediction held by a few gringos I knew when the whole Covid recession started as one had to wonder how desperate the locals would get.
Since it started a few years later, I would say that some extra degree of desperation has been seen in some areas of the city where tourists are.
More folks looking to fuck us over in those areas.
Though I would also say that it’s not just the extra desperation from some locals but also the dramatic increase in the amount of foreigners that give these genetic reject scumbags more fresh targets to go after.
The Stories of Other Gringos
As I said, it’s seemingly getting worse in certain foreigner heavy areas of the city (Roma Norte, Condesa, etc).
Or, at the very least, more stories coming out over the last few months than how I remember it when I began living here.
Here’s some more stories I found online for those curious.
Here's a second story below.
Here's a third story below.
And, for those who didn’t know, not every gringo who gets accused of having drugs is innocent.
As I wrote here, you got those who try trafficking drugs into the US, Canada or Europe.
In fact, here’s a recent story of a Canadian dude carrying around 69 kilos of cocaine in Mexico City.
So, to be fair to the cops out there, not every incident of someone carrying drugs is bullshit from their end.
It does happen.
Final Thoughts
At any rate, regardless of if you are guilty or not during a moment where they accuse YOU of having drugs, what should you do?
Well, I just wrote an entire article on the subject that you can find here.
So that covers it!
A simple topic regarding corrupt cops planting drugs on people for bribes. Something you see in Mexico and, to be fair, many other parts of the world.
For those curious on the subject, here’s some interesting videos I found of cops planting drugs on people south of the border.
And, for those even more curious about the subject, apparently the words “to plant drugs” translates to in Spanish “sembrar drogas.”
I’m sure you could use those words and find videos of people doing the same in other Latin American countries on Youtube for those curious.
At any rate, that’s all I got to say.
Drop any comments below in the comment section.
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Best regards,
Matt