Compare this to Morocco, where I grew up, which is an actual police state and has checkpoints all over the place. But there I never had any issue arguing with the cop (or claiming not to speak French) until he gave up and let me go. Because while they were everywhere they were even less trusted by their superiors and so were never empowered to do anything.

Here, if you look at a cop wrong on a bad day, they are empowered to rain down misery on you and piss them off bad enough, they’ll get their brothers in blue to make trouble for you too.