Something I have learned from living in Thailand for years is that as a foreigner, you have to be on super high-alert when you are driving not just because the roads here are exceptionally dangerous but because if you do end up involved in an accident chances are the blame will be shifted to you even if you are 100% innocent. I have heard some horror stories about how foreigners who were not even moving at the time get struck by another motorist and then the blame gets shifted to them. There are a lot of reasons that this can happen but much of it has to do with the Thai police always siding with their own population, even when that population is clearly at fault.
In an incident with me in my one and only accident on a motorbike, I was stuck from behind by a teenager who had an open beer in his hand while driving, there were tons of witnesses, and the police STILL tried to pin it on me. It was only after I called in a Thai teacher friend to the police station and she recognized the student and the student came clean that the police changed the accident forms to show the kid was at fault.
In my instance the police had attempted to put on the forms that I was driving drunk and that the beer was mine despite the fact that I was sober and multiple witnesses stated the beer belonged to the Thai boy.
This situation that popped up in the news today though isn't a question of just that, but it involves and accident where the responsible party, the guilty party, was actually an off duty-police officer, and he had rear-ended a pickup truck being operated by a foreigner.
I have posted many police-oriented stories in the past in Thailand and you may recall that they always revel in putting the pictures of the people involved without any blurring online with no sense of protecting the privacy or presumed innocence until proven guilty of the people involved and isn't it wonderful how once a cop is involved, they blur out the pictures.
It's kind of a silly process because the two versions of this story that I have read have the officer's full name in the same article.
The story goes like this: One car rear-ended another car and when the local traffic police turned up, the Thai man who was the one who rear-ended the other driver was insisting that it was the fault of the foreigner even though just like in the rest of the world, almost all instances of striking another vehicle from behind results in the fault lying on the driver who struck the other car in the back. This is basically universal, including in Thailand.
The Thai driver identified himself as police, an officer from Chonburi, and told the responding officer to charge the foreigner and even stated that the foreigner was in the country illegally, despite the fact that the two drivers had never met one another before.
The supposed police officer became irate with the foreigner on the site, behaving in a way that would get you or I arrested. The responding officer wasn't having any of this, but also didn't inform anyone that his body cam was live.
The Thai man posing as a police officer also refused to even show his driving license and was argumentative with the responding officer, accusing him of being a traitor and not respecting him, a senior officer, so he claims.
The responding officer did in fact check the legitimacy of the foreigner's documents as far as being in the country legally was concerned, and he was legally in the country.
The driver claiming to be a police officer then demanded the responding officer's full name and rank and stated he was going to use his influence and connections in the police force to get revenge not just on the foreigner, but on the responding officer as well.
This is the sort of thing that would land you or I in jail in our home countries, and since this made the news in Thailand I am hoping that this is exactly what happens to this self-proclaimed police officer, if he actually is a police officer.
The responding officer has submitted a formal complaint that can (and hopefully does) result in legal consequences for the Thai man in this instance including obstructing an officer and some other charges that I don't understand that are meant to be anti-corruption.
Witnesses and the articles that I read have stated that the foreigner seemed very nervous, but was completely compliant and polite during the entire exchange. I can only presume that the woman in the above picture is his Thai wife or girlfriend - which is quite a common situation in this country.
This situation is one that is all-too-common in this country. People aspire to become police officers not because it is a financially rewarding profession, but because the ability to be above the law comes along with it. I have heard many stories of abuse of power even to the point where people that are simply related to a ranking police officer feel as though the rules do not apply to them.
One story I know about here in Chiang Mai involves a woman who took a kitchen knife into a competing business to to threaten the competing establishment in some capacity. This would be VERY serious charges in most countries but nothing happened to her at all because she was at that time related to a high-ranking police officer who did whatever it is that they do behind closed doors to make the situation go away.
I was also once a passenger in a vehicle where the driver was drinking while driving, was driving erratically and seriously illegally, and did so with no sense of fear of getting busted. Guess what his job was? That's correct! He was a cop.
This sort of thing would normally not make the news but I think we are seeing a shift in Thai culture right now when these sorts of things involve police officers. This isn't because anything is actually going to change though, the age-old situation where cops can do whatever they want will almost certainly remain the same. It is being "allowed" to be in the news so that Thailand can have some sort of positive spin put on the police force for the international audience to witness because a foreigner was involved.
This country saw its first ever decline in the amount of foreigners who visited in 2024 outside of Covid times. Tourism is 20% of the overall GDP and it would be a massive blow to the overall economy if the widespread disdain for visiting this country is to continue.
It's a nice story to see that this particular officer stood his ground and was neutral, and even better that it is all on body cam. But I believe that this story and the bodycam footage is being made available to the public only for PR reasons, not because the police force is actually going to change anything. The offending officer will almost certainly not be legitimately punished although he certainly should be.