The incident I had in the dabob started me thinking. I was a little shocked that the driver just left the kid there even though he was in obvious pain. I have now remembered a little tidbit that I read a while back in one of the English newspapers. It seems that the police have a habit of arresting first and asking questions later. In some cases, they may not get around to asking anything for a couple of days. Another potential danger is that if they do not have any other witnesses or people in captivity, they just may hold the guy they have and assume that he’s the guilty one. There have been stories of people stopping to help an injured pedestrian being rushed off and held in jail, sometimes even if that person was not driving and the pedestrian had been hit by a car!
The police here are really something else. Often times they do some powerful person’s dirty work as their main line of business. It isn’t uncommon to hear of people being picked up and “detained” for a while. The release of the prisoner usually coincides with some sort of payment… The police can also, not surprisingly, be used by the government to intimidate people. There was an incident not too long ago where a previously closed religious school reopened without the government’s approval. The police swooped down and arrested 7 people in the school but curiously not the teacher/director. Two of the prisoners are under the age of 15. The authorities have agreed to let them out since they received the word of the sheik in the area that they will be on “good behavior.” What does that mean? Get this, and this is a quote, “This means that the seven have agreed not to belong to, or support any political group that opposes the government. They should also make a commitment not to follow any radical school of thought. This includes all religious schools of which the government disapproves.” Now isn’t that nice? The police detained them without pressing any charges and then extorted an agreement not to oppose the government in any way in order to be let free. Now why on earth would they have something against the government? I wonder….