The driver of a Porsche Cayenne who led Moscow cops on a street chase at 220 kilometers per hour got away with a negligible fine — while the officers on his tail could lose their jobs for wildly shooting at his car during the pursuit.
Alexander Bakhvalov paid 500 rubles ($16) for the Oct. 23 race, media reported. He also lost his license for six months.
But officers who set off after him face disciplinary action for opening fire and failing to use their lights and sirens during the chase, Moscow traffic police in a statement last week.
The charges did little good for police morale. Suspects' co-workers "said that if these guys get fired, they will not raise a gun even when you want them to shoot. Let the top brass shoot and apprehend bandits," Mikhail Pashkin, head of the officers' union Vesti television on Sunday.
The unidentified officers initially tried to pull over Bakhvalov, 23, after they say they spotted him driving his Porsche around 2 a.m. without his lights on.
But Bakhvalov did not have his documents with him and "didn't want to speak to policemen," he Gazeta.ru.
So instead, he hit the gas of his souped-up white sports car and led cops on a miles-long chase through heavy traffic on rain-soaked streets — the whole episode captured on the dashboard camera of the officers' Ford Focus.
As they struggled to keep up, the officers fired at Bakhvalov's car six times, leaving holes in the windows and back door.
He eventually managed to evade them and later abandoned the car, but turned himself in two days later after being tracked down through his telltale vanity license plate — "666."
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