A video taken from the front passenger seat shows a police officer asking a driver if he could have some of the pumpkins the truck was carrying.
Thai traffic police are notorious for setting up checkpoints in order to collect small bribes from drivers, and this officer casually showed us how common it really is.
Popular Facebook video-sharing page YouLike posted a clip from user Muzeed Pop. In it, as a truck carrying pumpkins passes a police checkpoint, the officer is heard proclaiming gleefully “Oh my, here comes something tasty!”
The officer proceeds to sweetly, straightforwardly ask if he could have three or four pumpkins from the truck to make pumpkin curry. The driver refuses, saying that the pumpkins belong to his boss. The cop says there’s no way the boss would know, to which the driver simply says “I’m an honest man, sir.”
As he goes on with his sweet talk, the officer is caught on camera holding out his hand to the driver, who puts a THB100 bill in it before driving away.
While people are amused at how smooth the officer was, they criticized him for trying to extort money. Some suspected that the driver must have violated traffic laws, as he handed over THB100 as if he knew that a bribe would send him on his way.
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