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Slow Down and Hide Your Wallet: Traffic Police Ahead
By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY
Published: April 26, 2006
MOSCOW — They are creatures of urban legend and the target of endless jokes in this exhaust-filled, car-clogged megalopolis. Burly men in baggy uniforms, Moscow's traffic inspectors are lampooned for creating monstrous traffic jams and their readiness to take or solicit a bribe, and blamed for everything from bad roads to terrorist attacks.
Such fear do they strike in drivers that a life-size mock-up of a traffic officer in a city south of Moscow was enough to cut violations significantly.
But despite their outsize reputation, said Officer Sergei Moskalyov, "You can't make traffic inspectors out to be from another world."
Perched behind the wheel of his blue-and-white Lada with a rattling door ("It's a domestic car," he said), in his warm inspector's jacket, Mr. Moskalyov is king of the road.
An eight-year veteran of the State Auto Inspection force, familiarly known by its acronym as the GAI (pronounced gah-EE), Mr. Moskalyov said he tried to be philosophical about the criticism. "Not everybody will love you," he said during a recent tour of his beat along the Garden Ring, the multilane inner beltway that runs for about nine miles around the city center.
To many people here, the road's name is a cruel joke. On a good day, the traffic moves at around 10 to 15 miles an hour, slows to a crawl during rush hour and has been known to bottleneck even at midnight. The exhaust could kill anything green.
Many drivers gripe that the jams are made worse by the traffic inspectors, who stand at every major intersection. Common wisdom is that they are after drivers' rubles in the form of fines, or bribes paid to avoid the fines.
Mr. Moskalyov retorts that Russia's low fines for minor violations — some of less than $2 for infractions like driving an improperly registered or inspected vehicle, failing to signal before turning or moderate speeding — encourage a cavalier attitude.
"Show me an inspector who asks for money," said Mr. Moskalyov, who agreed to be interviewed only after being authorized to speak with a reporter. However, he allowed, "It's another story when drivers offer money."
Indeed, in Russia, petty corruption is a two-way street, with many drivers admitting they prefer to pay a bribe of less than $10 than wait for a traffic inspector to fill out the necessary form for a tiny fine that must be paid at Sberbank, the state bank, known for long lines.
Mr. Moskalyov, 36, is thoughtful and well-spoken. Asked about the city's patience with traffic jams, he noted that Muscovites were used to waiting. "We had a hard life before," he said, referring to the Soviet-era plague of long lines for food and other necessities. "It's like standing in line."
Moscow counts more than 3.2 million registered cars, and every workday millions more come to the capital from the surrounding region.
Sparkling Audis, Mercedeses and the occasional Bentley share the capital's thoroughfares with rusty but hardy Soviet-era Zhigulis, Moskvich hatchbacks and Kamaz trucks. The traffic is worsened by bureaucrats' cars topped with blue flashing lights that have the right of way in traffic jams, which they often cause.
On his beat, Mr. Moskalyov alternates between cruising in his patrol car and standing at some of Moscow's busiest intersections.
"I do my job," he said at a crossroads near the United States Embassy, one of Moscow's seven Stalinist-era skyscrapers, a new shopping mall and a billboard advertising Il Patio pizza chain's Mafia Grill. "I ensure safety."
As he spoke, Mr. Moskalyov waved down a driver in a Mazda who he said had swerved suspiciously while making a turn. After a quick document check, he praised the young woman for wearing a seat belt and let her go without a fine.
"It is very rare to see someone wearing a seat belt for her own safety," he said, admitting that he often does not.
According to police statistics, nearly 34,000 people died in traffic accidents in Russia last year. In Moscow, 213 people died in traffic accidents in the first three months of 2006. (In New York City, only 298 people were killed in traffic accidents in all of 2004.)
When Mr. Moskalyov is on the morning shift, he rises at 5 a.m., downs coffee, bread and cheese, and makes it to work in 20 minutes. It's the only time of day when the road into town is clear.
Shortly after 6 a.m. he is at his unit's station, in a prerevolutionary mansion with no visible traces of its former grandeur, just cramped quarters, broken tiles, a basement cafe and a pool table. The walls are hung with photographs of Gaishniki, as members of the force are called, who were killed in the line of duty, and a huge red-and-white sign declaring "The Chief Responsibility of the Militia Is to Honestly and Conscientiously Serve the People."
One wall is taken up with an idealized stained-glass image of a Soviet-era Gaishnik that could probably be sold for a fortune as pop art.
If Mr. Moskalyov seems like a Potemkin Gaishnik, his home life could be a sitcom-perfect version of post-Soviet middle-class Moscow, featuring a parakeet, an adorable dog, a cat named Diva and teenage daughters, Anya and Olya, who haunt the nearby Mega Mall on weekends.
Mr. Moskalyov said the family's combined monthly income of 72,000 rubles, about $2,600, covered annual vacations, partly subsidized by the GAI. Last year, the family traveled to Tunisia, which, like Turkey and Egypt, has become an affordable package-tour destination for many Muscovites.
Mr. Moskalyov said he loved the mosaics in Carthage, and was fascinated to learn that female drivers there are not stopped after dark, a rule, he said, intended to protect male traffic officers from temptation.
That rationale, he said, proves his point about traffic inspectors, one that many a Muscovite might beg to differ with. "We are all people," he said, "like everyone else."
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Моcквичи, москвичи, москвичи...
Originally Posted by Bisquit 
