June 2003

This morning, as pretty much every morning, I was waiting to cross one of the big roads downtown Helsinki on my way to work. The pedestrian's light turned green and we, me and a number of other people, started to cross the street.
We were right in the middle of the street when all of a sudden a police car came speeding across the crossing with his emergency lights on. Since our light was green and it was coming in our direction, it must've ignored a red light from the direction it was coming from. Me, nor obviously any of the other pedestrians, had heard it coming, since it didn't have its siren on.
I've been taught as a little kid that any emergency vehicle has to follow the rules as a normal car, unless it has both the emergency lights and the siren on. Only in that situation it can ignore red lights and everything. And in an emergency situation there are either at least two people in the car, or then there's more than one car following.
We looked a bit surprised to the side, but no one really reacted to it. And we all just kept our pass to cross the street, no one hurrying a bit extra. And obviously the (only) police officer in the car wasn't all that much in a hurry, because he took all the time, slowed down, came to a complete stop, to let all the pedestrians pass the street, not to start driving again until the very last person had crossed to the other side.
I thought the whole situation was a teeny bit weird, so I turned around and checked where he was going. After a maybe a hundred meters or so the emergency lights were switched off and the police officer continued his way with low speed.

I wouldn't directly say that it's a form of being corrupt, that would probably go too far, but it's clear that also in Finland some police officers don't really take the rules all that serious...