Tajikistan’s police are rumored to be corrupt bribe-mongers, but my experience was different. They were ridiculously, over-the-top helpful, in the most inefficient way possible.
Rumor has it that a couple years ago, some Romanian motorbikers posted a video on YouTube of Tajik cops extorting a bribe from them. The video made it to the president, who made a big show out of arresting the corrupt cops and set a precedent that bribes can only be taken from locals, not from foreign tourists. Ever since then, the Tajik police treat foreigners as royalty.
Somewhere along the road before Dushanbe, Tajikistan, one of my bike bags was emptied and a iPod, speaker, shirt, and spare bike parts were stolen. None of these were particularly important, but I have a pretty awesome insurance policy that covers stolen items, so I figured it’d be worth getting a police report to file an insurance claim. Sounds easy enough, just walk in, get a report, walk out, right? Not exactly.
I went to Dushanbe’s main police station and the guard at the door told me that I should go to another station to deal with a small theft. So, I went to that station, and they told me to go back to the main station. After half an hour of arguing, the guard told me to wait 5 minutes until another guy would arrive. One and a half hours and a few selfie requests from random cops later, he told me to wait another 5 minutes. And 5 more, and 5 more. Finally the guy arrived after 2 hours, asked me what happened, and quickly told me to talk to someone else (who, presumably, was sitting there doing nothing for the last 2 hours). This dude asked me the same questions but seemed to be completely ignoring my answers and was only focused on which hotel I was staying in. I explained that I noticed everything missing long before I got to the hostel, but he didn’t give a shit. He was on to something! He was going to make a big bust! The hotel must have stolen my things! I guess the old saying “if you can’t get in to college, be a cop” holds true everywhere in the world. So, he pushed me into a car and took off towards the fanciest hotel in town.
“I’m not staying there.”
“Huh? Then what hotel are you staying at?”
“Green House Hostel.”
The look of dumbfounded confusion on his face told me that he had never heard of the place, and had never even imagined it possible that an American tourist would stay at anything but the fanciest hotel in town. I reluctantly directed him to my hostel, continuing to insist that I really am certain it didn’t happen there. Finally, as we pulled up to the driveway of the hotel, I repeated,
“Listen, nothing happened here, everything was stolen on the road before I arrived, NOT HERE, I can show you where it happened, IT WAS NOT HERE, I noticed the empty bag on the road, NOT IN THE HOSTEL, do you understand? Why are we here? Nothing happened here! Why are we here? All of this happened before Dushanbe!”
“Really? Why didn’t you say so?”
*facepalm* “I need a police report. I don’t need to find the things, they’re already gone and it’s ok, I’m happy to have less weight on my bike. I just need a police report so I can file an insurance claim. Nothing else”
“Oh, but of course we will recover everything for you! You are a respected tourist! We will help you, don’t worry!”
“Can I get a police report first? I can share the insurance money with you.”
Finally, the driver turned to the cop and explained exactly what I had been saying the whole ride, and they took me to another police station where I could get a report. At my third station of the day, I was brought directly to the chief, who asked me the same questions 10 more times, played on his phone or made jokes with the other cops while I answered, and then asked the same questions again. The only question of which he seemed remotely interested in the answer was, “what is an average police salary in the US?”
Another half hour wait and he took me to the man who would finally write me a report. This guy was the first person I had met all day who didn’t appear to have come straight out of the movie Idiocracy. He was present and listening when I talked, and he actually did write the police report that I needed. The only problem was that he only knew how to type with one finger, so the process went at a rate of a paragraph an hour. Thankfully, the report was only one paragraph long. I signed it and we went on a search for the chief who had to sign and stamp it. Not in his office, not smoking a cigarette outside, not in the bathroom, not in the break room, finally we found him smoking cigarettes in another cop’s office. Well, on the bright side, there’s so little crime that they don’t have to do much. After 7 hours, I had the police report that I came for, and never even had to pay a bribe.
When I got back to the hostel, the front desk staff informed me that a squad of cops had come to raid the hostel in search of my things.
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