Illegal Taxi

On Wednesday night last week I met my old French roommates from Buenos Aires for dinner in Paris (Axel & Alex). We went to an Argentinian steakhouse and had a great dinner conversing in Spanish. Axel now works importing/exporting French cheeses to Latin America and regularly works in Spanish and Portuguese. Alix works as a consultant in Paris and is getting married in the summer to a French man. Another girl named Julie who also studied abroad joined us as well and she actually married the Colombian roommate of one of the exchange students in Buenos Aires. So out of the 4 of us, 3 of us had our lives substantially shaped by the experience and became obsessed with Latin America. Alix, on the other hand, has never returned to Latin America after 8 years. Here's a picture from 2008 and now.

Anyway, after dinner I caught the last train home and arrived at 11 pm to the train station in Fontainebleau. I looked at the bus schedule and realized that no buses ran after 10 pm. I looked for an official taxi, and there was nothing. So I resigned myself to walking home the 50 minute walk even though I had class at 8:30 am the next morning. As I was crossing the parking lot of the train station to leave, a guy approached me and said “Taxi?” I said “How much to downtown?” He said “5.” I said “Oui.” He led me to his car and there were already 3 other clients in the car. I knew it wasn’t a real taxi, but I wanted to get home and I felt like we had safety in numbers.

He drove us the 10 minutes to downtown and everyone was silent the whole way. He pulled over to the curb and I started to get out when 4 police officers surrounded our car. I didn’t know exactly what they were saying, but it was pretty clear that they knew it was an illegal taxi. The driver was quickly hand cuffed and placed in a European cop car (the ones that go “Weeee wooooo weeeee wooooo”). I had to give the cop my Washington State driver's license, which apparently was sufficient even though everyone always says to carry a copy of your passport. The cop looked at me and goes “INSEAD?” I said “Oui.” Immediately, I could tell that they knew I wasn’t an issue, and I figured that I was going to be only delayed 10 minutes or so.

Unfortunately, fate had other plans. The guy sitting next to me had left his backpack in the car. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Weirdly, when we got pulled over this guy got really nervous and his hands got all shaky. I remember thinking to myself “Relax dude, they just want the driver not us.” When the cops searched the car it became apparent why he was nervous; the cop pulled a huge freezer zip lock bag of marijuana out of his backpack. Not a small bag, but a huge bag. HOLY SHIT! The cops scored the double whammy: an illegal taxi driver AND a drug dealer. Naturally, the drug dealer denied that this was his bag and we were all presumed to be guilty. Off to the police station we went. At this point I realized that it wasn’t going to be a 10 minute ordeal after all.

We got to the police station around 11:30 pm at night. They sat us all down on a bench and showed us the bag of weed. I didn’t understood all of it, but I got the gist. They were trying to get one of us to fess up to the bag and were saying that they could always go look at the video footage from the train station to see who had the bag. Luckily, this line of reasoning was enough to convince the drug dealer to admit it was his bag. Thank god because otherwise it could have been a much longer night. After the drug dealer fessed up, they put the other three of us (black guy, French chick, and me) into a waiting room with white walls, no windows, and a mirror that was clearly double sided. Then we waited. It wasn’t exactly clear why we were waiting, but I guess the police were busy processing the taxi driver and drug dealer. 

After about 45 minutes of uncomfortable waiting, the cops returned and took the guy for questioning. There was nothing to do in the room other than read the police brochures on how to spot jihadism in your teenage son. My phone also only had 10% battery so I couldn’t even browse reddit! I decided to conserve battery in case it was a very long night and put my phone into airplane mode and checked it every 30 minutes to send updates to Sandra who was very worried. Another 45 minutes went by and then they returned for the girl. They thought about taking me but when they realized I wasn’t French and didn’t want to deal with me, they opted for the girl.

At this point it was about 1 am and I was all alone in the room. I decided to sleep sideways on the wooden seats, but the bright fluorescent light was too intense for me to relax. Finally, they called me. The police officer said in French “Can you read? Can you understand what I am saying?” I said yes, but he seemed rather skeptical. We went into his office and he sat me down in a chair next to his computer. I was nervous, but was 95% sure that I wasn’t in trouble. Still, 95% is not 100%. He started to ask me about what happened after I got off the train. I explained the story that the man approached me and said Taxi? The cop said “Taxi. or Taxi?” When I confirmed that it was a question “Taxi?” He smiled and looked at his partner. I guess that was the evidence they were looking for and perhaps the other two people had been less straightforward. I felt bad for the taxi driver as I had seen a baby's car seat in the car when I got in and it was clear that he was just trying to meet a need for people to get from the train station to downtown when there were no buses/taxis, but I had to defend myself first.

The rest of my “testimony” was just filling in the details of my whole experience in the taxi. I was proud of myself for doing it all in French and I understood most of what he said. I also said that I didn’t know the taxi was illegal when I got in, just to be safe. I’m just a dumb foreigner after all. After 15 minutes, they had all the information they needed. They said “You are not in trouble. You were a victim of an illegal taxi, but next time, walk home.” I said “Oui, oui, oui, oui.” I emerged from the police station at around 1:20 am and still had to walk home 15 minutes. The least they could have done is given me a ride!

I went to bed around 2 am and felt like shit during my 8:30 am class. I became a bit of a celebrity on campus as I was the first student out 300 to go the police station. Luckily, I didn’t get and trouble and I was only inconvenienced 3 hours of my time. Next time, I’ll make sure to walk.