Stopped by the Cops

Today in my rental car, I ran a red light that I didn't see. A cop standing in the middle of the street pulled us over. He told me what I did, but I just assumed he was lying because he wanted to get paid (I honestly had stopped and looked, but did not see any light). I actually ran the light, because I came back later that day and saw that there was a light there.

The cop asks for my passport and starts to give a long speech about an infraction, $100, go here, go there, cameras are watching us, blah blah blah (my girlfriend did the talking because he spoke no English). He basically was just stalling until we offered him money. After about 10 mins, he told me to get in the car and roll up the tinted window, fold up the money ($16 was all I had) and hand it to him under my driver's license (so no one could see).

Later I talked to a local and he said that there's no need to pay more than $10...I'll remember that next time. Thank God I was able to just pay $16...in the US it would've been way more than that.