Police Chase Adventures: Central Market Motorcycle Chase Complete w...

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As the National election happened recently here in Mexico we’ve seen nothing short of too many cops patrolling the city. Around the down town area of town called the zocalo near the central market at this point we’re nearly always betting on being harassed at least short term going there on the motorcycle. For the most part we don’t wear helmets (we’ve got our reasons, please spare us the safety lecture) around the city and today when making a trip to the market for some meat and salt we got harassed, a bit too much for our liking.

You ever pass a cop and just fucking know he’s going to pull you over? We passed this cop on a motorcycle and I knew it when I saw him purse his lips in frustration at our blatant disobeying of his authority and the law. So, he decided to come after us and despite our crazy manuevering, he managed to follow us through the market.

John decided to park the bike with him still behind us and run off into the main central market building, with me behind him. It was our (or at least my) first time running on foot from the police although they didn’t seem to pursue us much, having our bike at their disposal.

We walked around and looked at things and bought things like garlic and cotton yarn for crochet. When we headed back to the bike we both had some anxiety as we figured he’d be there, if not bothering our bike and we were right. He already had it parked in the street with reinforcements around him.

So we pulled out our big ass smartphones and started filming their asses, while asking why they were bothering us. The one that chased us told us it was about the helmet, to which we yelled at him for nearly killing us over a fucking helmet law that wouldn’t hurt anyone but us in a worst case scenario situation realistically speaking. We also started our classic no peso no bribe rant.

They had our bike so we started yelling at them, calling them banditos which is the spanish term for thieves. The situation didn’t clear up no matter how much we yelled until we saw the tow truck pull up, which was intended to take our motorcycle away because they couldn’t get the license plate off. This is both bittersweet and funny, here it’s typical fashion for cops to take a plate if they want to ticket you but you aren’t around, so John got smart and padlocked ours on, which frustrated the police to the point where they decided to tow it.

I wasn’t having it and neither was John. I got on the motorcycle first, and both John and I shoved the cop off of it pretty forcefully. When I got on I made eye contact with him and he was seriously floored that we were taking it back. He grabbed the bike again but John got on too.

This whole thing was being filmed and I was looking around gauging the response from the locals who all seemed curious at the hippies calling the cops banditos. When I got on the bike and we shoved the cop off, people started to gather around. We’d seen a few groups on the sidelines watching, waiting for someone to pitch in and say something so they could all start yelling. Very much a power to the people culture here in Acapulco Bay.

Before I knew what was going on a bunch of locals swarmed us and started yelling at the cops, which was the utter highlight of this whole mess. Some got seriously passionate like one woman basically calling them stupid for bothering tourists, loudly and repeatedly. People even told the cops there would be little money in the ticket. You could see the cop sweat and eventually after about 3 minutes of maybe 40 people screaming at him to let us go he gave us the go ahead.

The woman who got most passionate looked to us and said something in Spanish that was something along the lines of ….

“That’s not all Mexican people, just them.”

A way to say…

“The majority of us are truly better than this, as you can see.”

And dammit if she didn’t totally remind me why I love it here, NO one in Mexico City would have come to our aid in that way. Basically yelling….

“We don’t care if it’s illegal, fucking let them go!” (in spanish, obviously)

So if she’s out there reading this, lady, thank you. Her friend was telling her to chill the fuck out with a calm “tranquilo amiga” but honestly she was part of what put the heat on the police. I thought she was gonna fight the dude over it and when he realized he was surrounded by a mob of angry Mexicans, half of them drunk, he let go.

We told her…

“Yo amor Acapulco, pero yo no amor policia. Muchas Gracias” (I love Acapulco, but I don’t love cops. Many thanks)

So while some may want to be like “fuck that guy” it’s not necessarily him and dammit while he was persistent and annoying I’d WAYY rather deal with a cop that can respond appropriately to public pressures like that instead of acting a fool like most United States cops. So honestly I get that most of his behavior was down to ego and we’re all human.

The moral of the story here is that we can still stand up for ourselves and basic rights here if we want to and if we’re persistent enough the people here will support us in that and that’s just what keeps me here, dealing with the heat and the mosquitos.

Just like everywhere else Mexico is not perfect and has problems but especially in Acapulco the people make the whole damn thing so much more worth it.

There is video footage that includes the chanting of the crowd, we are going to try and edit it to somewhat protect the identities of the people as it was just SO good.