The two cops took me to Sliema police station, at the intersection of Triq Rodolfu and Triq Manwell Dimech. I stayed there for one or two hours, half-naked, behind their counter. They didn't take the trouble to put me in a cell, or give me clothes. They put me the handcuffs. Then they took them away, when it suited them.
Many times, I asked them a lawyer, a call to my embassy. Each time they refused it. I asked them to loosen the handcuffs, which were hurting mme. They refused. Cops, who are sick people, love to do that. It hurts, it shows “who is the boss”, and it humiliates. All the time, they were talking about me in maltese, which I can't understand (it sounds like arabic).
Very quickly, I understood they were embarassed about me. They wanted to take me home, and even proposed to take me there! But I didn't accept their proposition. COP 455 would tell me that I “couldn't be like that” (in underwear). Tell that to the hundreds of tourists who wander half-naked through the streets of Malta. He would tell me that I couldn't call my employer “a thief”. Are there any laws in Malta that forbid people from calling a thief a thief? If they do, they are crap, and don't have my respect.
All the time, they were pressuring me. I told them to charge me, or to release me, so that I would continue my protest. I told them I was ready and willing to go to court (to make a bit of fuss about my precarious situation). And without falling in illegality (no insults, no threats), I would tease them, ask them questions, tell them that I would sue them if they behaved poorly, and so on. I was proving to be more annoying that criminals.
With criminals, they know how to deal: with violence. They know that they have the support of public opinion to crush them. But it is harder to break a protester, a poor guy who doesn't harm other people. You look like the bad guy, if you do that. And how do you react when the people in front of you just doesn't cooperate? Especially if you are used to have all the people cral in front of you, most of the time?... Cops have small brains... They tend to react by violence, always. But they are only vaguely conscious that their force is powerless if it goes against public opinion. They are a tiny, tiny minority of the population, and can only go against it so far. In my case, how would they look, in court, if they had to justify my arrest to a judge minimally honest? Like idiots and like dicks.
So here I was, in my underwear, behind the desk of the police... A lady arrived. She was with a man. She came to complain about a man who had been violent to her. The man on her side was a witness. They were angry. They wanted to sue. Here, I observed once more something that I had already discovered many years ago: cops are super lazy. In this case, just to avoid doing the paperwork, they invented some bullshit (“we cannot process your complaint, you have to go to the police station of your area of residence”). Even in a case like that, that involved aggressions and threats, they wouldn't move their lazy tax-sucker arses. They “cooked” the girl so well that she went away.
But my case was still unsolved. They took my handcuffs off, and put me on the phone... with the sergeant-in-charge! He wasn't at the station at the time. To have the privilege of talking to such an important man, the Boss himself, I suppose my case must have been of the higher importance. He wanted to go home, ad told me he would call my boss to the police station the day after to sort things out. I knew he was lying. I have been thinking, writing and reading about the State since I am sixteen. So I know cops lie systematically. It is a second nature for them: they do it all the time. In this case, what he wanted is to get rid of me ASAP. He thought “This guy is going home for a good night of sleep, tomorrow he will be cooler, and won't bother us”. I told him, if he wanted he could call my boss right now, instead of waiting the day after. Ivan has his shop open till late in the evening. I told the sergeant-in-charge to have an informal talk with him, so that he would pay me. He told me he “couldn't do it, it is not legal, bla bla bla”. Of course, this was bullshit. The minute before he had proposed me to have that informal chat in the morning after, but it was illegal to have it now, in the evening?!!! Liar.
I saw that he was not honest and frank, and that he had no intention of using his authority to solve the case quckly, in a just manner. He could have helped me press charges against my boss, if he wanted so. He was just taking the side of one of his own, against a foreigner. I told him to charge me if he wanted, or release me so that I could keep on protesting. I was not going home with them.
Since they are not men of good will, they decided to make me spend the night in jail. They put me in the car, and we crossed the town direction Floriana (near Valletta), where the police headquarters are located, and where a bigger jail would “great” me for the night.
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