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Targeting the wrong tourist
A Minnesota lawmaker took on Mexican cops.
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MEXICO CITY - "Piece of cake," the three police officers might have thought when they spied the rental car with five American tourists driving down the main drag of Cancun's hotel zone.
They pulled the car over and told the driver, Scott Fischbach, that he was going about a mile an hour over the speed limit, recalled his wife, Michelle Fischbach. One of the officers cupped his hands and asked Scott Fischbach to blow into them. "This was their Breathalyzer," Michelle Fischbach said, recounting her astonishment on the last night of her vacation with her husband, his sister and brother-in-law and their daughter. "They tried very hard, but Scott doesn't drink."
The police took his driver's license and told him they would take him to jail unless he came up with $300, she said. The patrol car escorted the family back to the hotel, where she says the group came up with the money. The officers declined to write a receipt. What the police may not have expected, however, was that Michelle Fischbach is a Republican state senator from Paynesville, Minn. -- or that she would complain so effectively.
"The concierge at the hotel said he was not surprised at all," said Michelle Fishbach. "He said they get you for $1,000 if you have been drinking."
On Wednesday, the episode made front-page news in Mexico after Cancun officials released the information to news organizations, some eight months after the event. (Yes, those police officers were fired long ago.)
And in Paynesville, the Fischbachs got a check in the mail for about 4,000 pesos, about $300, from the Cancun city government reimbursing them.
The transit officer's "mordida," which translates roughly as "a little bite," is standard procedure in Mexico. But apart from drunken driving, even the most serious violation usually costs no more than $50.
When Michelle Fischbach returned home, she wrote a letter to Gregorio Sanchez Martinez, Cancun's mayor, mentioning her position as a state legislator.
It caught his notice. "I personally attended to it," Sanchez told reporters Wednesday. "In this administration, we will not tolerate any corruption." Some of the city's former top police officials are under investigation for links to the Zetas drug cartel.
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