Got a real intense stop and search just now. Was low on petrol driving back late from town so took a detour to this self-serve pump in Graca that is the only 24 hour one in the area... just after I finished filling up a police car rolled up behind me, tailed me for the next hundred metres or so and then, as far as I could tell for no particular reason, they put the fucking flashing lights on and pulled me over to do what I would have described as an unnecessarily aggressive 'random check'. Actually, I'm just assuming it was a random check, they never gave any explanation as to why they stopped me so although that seems the most likely reason, it could be that something else precipitated the whole thing.
Anyway, after I opened the window I didn't even get the chance to say "Hello, what seems to be the officer problem?" before they ordered me out of the car and then made me cross the road and sit down. Next I had to empty my pockets and then this one guy got me stood with hands against the wall for a really close pat down - like a proper one, not like when you go in a club and I suppose they tend to be looking for a weapon or a bag of drugs large enough to mark you out as a dealer, in fact it was much closer even than the search you get when you board a plane, the guy searched me really close, pulling out every pocket and going through every fold of the material inside them, every seam of my jeans etc - he could probably tell that I'm not circumcised - and so on while like three more of the cunts went through the car and a few more watched. I think that from the number of guys involved there must have been a second car somewhere out of sight behind the one that stopped me The sheer number of people that were involved made it feel more intimidating.
They made me do a breathalyser as well and, at first, cos I've not done one before, I didn't blow hard enough and he immediately assumed that I was trying to avoid getting measured and got the arse. When I did do it correctly and they were able to get a reading they didn't say what the level was but I'm gonna assume that it was ok cos I have a feeling that they might have mentioned it if I'd failed...
There were an awful lot of commands, I don't know if it's to wrong-foot you or what, but I started getting out of the car and he sort of barked "Stay in the car!" and then "Get out of the car!" and then "Go over there and sit down - now stand up and put your hands on the wall" and then there was a lot of "keep your hands on the wall!" and "Don't look at me!" from the guy searching me the whole time while the chorus was making a number of vague hints about what was going to happen to me - until a certain changing point came that I recognised cos there has been a similar moment during every interaction of this nature I have had with Portuguese police (ok except one time). I'm realising that there is a specific procedure that they follow if they are not gonna do anything to escalate it to any official level, a procedure which requires that at first they will be intimidating and a bit scary, and then they maintain this for a certain amount of time so that you become worried and you don't know whether or not you are going to be arrested - and then when they decide that you have had enough of a telling off (or maybe when they get bored I dunno) they relax and the tone changes and at that point you know that you will be leaving with nothing more than the slap on the wrist which has now been administered. On this particular occasion, what I understood as the signal that this point had been reached was when the one that seemed to be the leader, asking most of the questions and issuing most of the threats rather jarringly changed tone to suddenly say "But I can tell that you are a nice guy" and then all that remained were a few friendly-ish formalities before they told me to get back in the car and go. You could see their attitude (or is it just their projected attitude?) change from "Let's get this cunt to the station and throw the book at him" to "Just confiscate all the drug paraphernalia - or at least as much as we can carry between us - and send him on his way".
Like I say, it's not the first time that something like that has happened to me here but definitely the worst. Piecing it together with the benefit of hindsight, I reckon that a big part of it was due to the ownership documents being in Liza's name. Also, being a freedom loving Englishman I don't automatically carry my passport or any other ID, which, to members of the cryptofascist neo-nazi Euorpean super state we so wisely left, is a crime on a par with murder. Your average Portuguese is more likely to leave the house with no trousers on and his dick flapping around merrily in the breeze than he is to forget his ID. So, from their point of view they DID have a suspicious, unidentified male driving a car in someone else's name.
And now I come to think about it properly, the moment which I describe above when it all switched and he started telling me that I was a nice guy came very shortly after I had correctly given the name on the documents - I'd been sat on the naughty step about 20m away on the other side of the road and the main man - I think the technical terms is the "alpha" - came over and said "You have one more chance to tell me the truth, if you don't then things will go badly for you" and then when I said that the car was "either in my name or that of Ms Elizaveta etc" he did visibly relax.
So I'm now thinking that what happened was a random stop and check and test for DUI, but perhaps the reason it went up a notch was cos there were a few moments where they thought I had nicked the car (and what had happened to the real owner?) and was deliberately concealing my name. Whatever, it was pretty unpleasant. And to be honest it is almost every time you have to deal with that particular type of police - the ones who are young roid-raging men in a pale blue uniform itching for someone to give them an excuse... any excuse.