Stories of abuse of power, like you mentioned, make me sick to my stomach
What finally happened to the state trooper?
Did he finally get exposed in the local newspapers, and had to resign?
Or did he just retire in the normal fashion?
I’m afraid you’ll tell me he got a better job, and now he’s governor 
Jacky Gleason immortalized the corrupt state trouper in Smokey and the Bandit. The Dukes of Hazzard added their bit of comedy.
Car & Driver magazine once followed a speeding trouper with his lights flashing and found him pulling into his favorite donut place!
I would consider Rosco P. Coletrane . . . I don’t know if I got the spelling correct . . . to be more incompetent, versus corrupt
I have had too many encounters with corrupt/ignorant cops (although 90% are honest/competent). Out of about a dozen moving violations I have had 10 dismissed in traffic court. One I mailed in (which was a revenue generation set-up) that was not worth the trouble of missing work and 100 mile round trip. And another with the fine reduced by 50%.
@db4690, that trooper I mentioned did move up the chain and he wasn’t far from the Govenor’s office. As a matter of fact, here’s the jerk in question and I certainly didn’t send any flowers.
I was especially hot about that ticket he gave my younger son because I was present when he did it. My boy had just got his first car and I had gone to the DMV with him to register it. We were on the way home on a divided 4 lane and the cruise set at 65.
The trooper (above) was going the other way and hit the brakes to whip around. I instinctively looked at the speedo and it was right on 65. I’ve also been in enough cars that I can tell the difference between 65 and 73 and 73 in a 65 was just what he wrote him up for.
I have a feeling that radar unit was never reset after pulling someone over for actually doing 73 because it was always “as you can see my radar says you were doing 73”. Everyone in NW OK was doing 73 according to him.
Two brothers who are friends of my son were also stopped and ticketed. Yep, 73…
He’s also the trooper who routinely knew a crop duster was landing on a public highway to tank up and who claimed he never saw it. Right. Broad daylight, 200 yards away, bright yellow Stearman bi-plane blocking both lanes with a spinning chrome prop, a chemical truck on the shoulder, and he turned on an adjoining road to avoid the road blockage…
Later it became “uh…uh…uh… I think the FAA oversees that.”. Yes, I’m disgruntled with the guy.
One afternoon the plane landed behind a school bus. That led to some excitement with the kids gawking out the back window. Luckily the bus did not slam on the brakes; otherwise a prop might have made mincemeat out of some students.
I believe that the term for that is the “mordida”.
Yes, that was standard practice in Mexico as late as the '70s, but I don’t know if it is still the case.
(More likely, the “fine” is much higher nowadays…)
"Stearman bi-plane"
Wow! That jogs a pleasant memory. In high school I worked at a small private airport in an affluent area. One guy had a mix of vintage/antique airplanes. I would get up on the wing of his Stearman and leaning against some flying wires, put in a crank handle in the engine cowl, get the inertia flywheel starter whipping around and pull a chrome T-handle out to engage the starter. I can still hear and feel the hit and miss thunder and see the smoke when that old radial came to life. 
CSA
"Stearman bi-plane"
Wow! That jogs a pleasant memory. In high school I worked at a small private airport in an affluent area. One guy had a mix of vintage/antique airplanes. I would get up on the wing of his Stearman and leaning against some flying wires, put in a crank handle in the engine cowl, get the inertia flywheel starter whipping around and pull a chrome T-handle out to engage the starter. I can still feel the prop wash, hear the hit and miss thunder, and see the smoke when that old radial came to life.
CSA
VDCdriver:
mordida
Literally means TO BITE. Bribery as noun and verb, in Mexico, and mostly in Mexico City. Easiest way-out when a cop pulls you over for any kind of reason. Applicable at any circumstance when the biter wants to be favored by any authority. While the term as noun is clearly represented in any given amount of money, it is not very clear who is the ‘biter’ and who ‘gets bitten’ between the briber and the one who receives the bribe.
I have driven quite a bit in Mexico between 1975 and 2006 and have never been pulled over I always remembered the advice I was given and had a couple $20 bills ready.
@db4690 Yes, more dumb than crooked. Drivers with money clipped to their licenses are common in many countries.
A rich woman from Malaysia in a Mercedes drove into Singapore over the causeway that connects the 2 countries, and then was caught speeding. She tried to bribe the officer, not realizing that Singapore is the Switzerland of Asia with very stringent laws. To her consternation she was promptly arrested and jailed for both speeding and trying to bribe an officer of the law.