Day 37, June 3 - Kazan' Police Day

0km - 2507km, sunny 25C, no wind, 0 shots, 0 sauna, 0 Lenin, HC

Woke up fairly early and started to retrace the evening through the park in the slight chance that I might find a tossed blue wallet. Sadly, nothing came to pass with this and we decided to head to the police station to see if they would be willing to help out. (At the start of the trip getting involved with the Militsia police in Russia was pretty much at the bottom of my list of things to do.) At first they listened with general disinterest, but as the dictation of my story of woe progressed they became a little bit more interested. My guess is that they realized that, as a foreigner, I had more money than the average Russian as was willing to 'grease the wheels' to get things moving. In fact, I effectively offered (through my HC hosts) to pay they police $100 to find my missing wallet. Considering that the salary of your average policeman is $300/month, this seemed like a fairly motivating offer!

The first question was which cards to recover, as both my credit and debit card were missing. I decided to immediately cancel my credit card (which could be used by anyone who could fake being from a Roman-fonted country). However, with the PIN protection on the debit, I thought I would chance it out for a couple of days in case something actually happened. Fortunately, the girls had used their real names, had some pretty identifying tattoos, and one happened to mention the building in which she lived. So we were taken into the police station's innards and sat down at THE computer (yes 1 computer for the local police department) and started up the computer program that contained THE computer file on where everyone lived in Russia (yikes!). We put in the culprit's building number and scanned through for a Ludmila who was around 30. We found two possible candidates, and the cop went off and pulled their internal passport photos, and, amazingly, one was a match. By then the cops had also talked to their 'big-boy' underworld contacts to see if anyone in their 'organizations' could shake a few trees and see if my wallet fell out. (It was kind of surreal to see the station's lead inspector chatting and laughing it up on the phone with local mafia kingpin.)

This started the ball rolling and within two hours we were sitting in the cop car in front of Ludmila's work going in for the arrest. Sadly, she wasn't working that day, but we managed to get all the information needed on her and her friend - both noted for their underworld connections - and that she would be working at noon the next day. Me and the coppers headed back to the police station so that my Russian handwrittened, signed statement (a big yikes!) could be taken. I then signed a letter addressed to the police commissioner saying that I wanted the girls to be punished.

Overall, I was still pretty pissed about what had happened and the money situation I was in; however, I had started to calm down and thoughts of a retreat back to North America started to fade (I have made it further than Napolean and Hitler...) It was an interesting cultural experience - almost a living documentary film - to spend the day in a Russian police station. (Or something like a Slavic version of the TV series 'The Shield'.) Knowing that the cops work on a $300/month salary was pretty eye-opening, as was the lack of any government support in terms of computers, furniture, police vehicles, and petrol ... yes, they have to pay for their gas themselves. It's easy to understand why corruption and bureaucracy are endemic in the Russian police forces, specifically, and the Russian civil service, as a whole. We then headed home at 2000h for our much needed first meal of the day satisfied with the morrow's promise of impending arrests on the mow. I also felt that I now better understood many of the 19th and 20th century Russian-authored novels I've read over the past years ...