Encounter with a Nicaraguan Cop

To give you a better idea of how things work here I will expand on on an incident we had a couple of weeks ago with a Nicaraguan cop. Ryan and I were blessed by the generosity of a fellow missionary who was away in the states for a while and let us borrow his vehicle until we bought our own. We received this vehicle during our second week, during which we were reminded that along with a corrupt government comes a corrupt legal system and police force. These hard working underpaid men and women make up for a lack of good wages from the government by stopping random people on the side (sometimes the middle of a round-a-bought) road and making up reasons to take away licenses unless paid a bribe. Often times the cops will give options or leave accusations hanging so the driver will catch on and OFFER a bribe. This way the cop can't be accused of asking for one. Our goal is to in no way offer a bribe if possible and argue the reason for being pulled over. We do not want to encourage this behavior by giving in and paying them off to avoid arguing. On a day in which we made the comment that we were surprised that we hadn't been stopped by the police as we learned our way around Managua's crazy streets. We were maybe five or six kilometers from our front gate, getting ready to pass the police station, when we noticed four cops outside in the middle and the sides of this major highway stopping lots of people. On our side of this four lane highway, a pickup was stopped in the left lane making it hard for other vehicles to get by. After making sure the way was clear, we merged into traffic, making sure it was NOT a solid double line that we crossed over to get into the right lane(which seems to be the number one reason cops pull people over, even if no line is visible at all on the road). Suddenly a little red car pulled in next to us in the left and must have realized it couldn't get by the truck pulled over in the middle. So out of courtesy we scooted as far over to the right next to the shoulder in order that we both could pass by. Suddenly the cop who had pulled over the truck was directly in front of us and the red car flagging us both down to stop. I hoped we wouldn't be recognized as Americans through the tinted glass and watched for his hand to wave us on. He looked at the red car then looked at us and waved us to the side of the road, the red car who had been straddling the solid double line in order to pass the truck drove on. Ryan and I quickly decided we would play visiting Americans who spoke little if any Spanish and hope the cop would give up on us and let us go. The cop said that we touched the center line which he said is against the law in Nicaragua. We knew that we hadn't touched the center line, but it was no use arguing with him. After about twenty minutes of broken Spanish, screaming and crying kids in the backseat, we realized that he was not going to change his mind. We have since learned to argue, NEVER giving in if you are absolutely sure you didn't do anything wrong and it's obvious the cop is making it up, or state from the very beginning that you would gladly take a ticket, oh and the badge number and name of the cop. We are told that they usually will not write out a ticket if they don't have a real reason because it's too long a process and too much paperwork since everything is done by hand. Oh how I love irony.