TalkBaja.com » Baja Mexico Forums » Staying Safe in Baja

By CHELCEY ADAMI | Imperial Valley Press
11:00 p.m. PST, January 1, 2013

Twenty-five U.S. citizens were the victims of homicide in Baja California in the year period ending July 2012 with a majority of the murders narcotics related.

Valley residents who regularly travel to Mexico say they simply exercise caution and common sense down here, undeterred by a U.S. Department of State’s November travel warning to some parts of Mexico.

In a state by state assessment, extra precaution particularly at night was advised for northern Baja California including Mexicali and Tijuana, but no advisory is in effect for southern Baja California.

For the one-year period ending in July 2012, the number of murders in Mexicali increased by 43 percent, from 127 in the preceding year to 181, according to the report with Tijuana showing 351 murders for the same year.

Twenty-five U.S. citizens were the victims of homicide in Baja California in the year period ending July 2012 with a majority of the murders narcotics related.

The travel warning writes that there’s “no evidence that Transnational Criminal Organizations have targeted U.S. visitors based on their nationality,” adding that resort areas and tourist destinations generally don’t see drug-related violence or crime as much as border regions or areas along major trafficking routes.

However, it does state that U.S. travelers should be aware that there is generally a violent struggle between Mexican and U.S. governments and narcotics traffickers for control, and 113 U.S. citizens were reported murdered in Mexico in 2011 as well as 32 in the first six months of 2012.

Gun battles, kidnappings, disappearances, carjacking and highway robbery were all specifically cited as possible dangers.

“To reduce risk, if absolutely necessary to travel by road, we strongly urge you to travel between cities throughout Mexico only during daylight hours, to avoid isolated roads, and to use toll roads whenever possible,” the travel warning writes.

Bob Ham, Imperial County’s intergovernmental relations director to the board, spends more than half his time in San Felipe and even spent the New Year holiday there with family.

“Most of the stuff you hear is in the big cities when people are in the wrong part of town, dealing with the wrong element and it’s the same thing that happens in Los Angeles, Chicago or New York,” he said. “People should look at the murder rate where the State Department warns against and compared it to neighborhoods in major cities.”

He stated that most of the violent crime involving U.S. citizens in Mexico included people somehow involved in crime themselves.

“I don’t get myself involved in drugs, or trafficking or guns or anything like that, and if you get down into all those statistics, that’s what it is all about,” he said. “If you’re law abiding and go into tourist destinations or into Mexicali, we think Mexico is safer than many of the cities in the United States.”

Ham laughed while recalling that his friends in New Jersey asked him if he was scared being in Mexico while his San Felipe friends told him to be careful when visiting New Jersey.

The University of San Diego Trans-Border Institute’s December News Monitor reports that drug-related homicides, or “ejecuciones,” are down in 2012 for the first time in nearly a decade after seeing them rise annually since 2006 with the biggest jump in 2009.

One of the most consistent sources of this kind of information is the Mexico City-based newspaper Reforma, although they have stopped reporting on weekly “ejecuciones” since Nov. 30.

Calexico resident Arnold Brown travels into southern Baja California annually with a group of Valley resident for the races as well as a few other times a year.

As a retired law enforcement officer, he said you just need to be careful of your surroundings.

“We see a lot of people from the Valley. It’s good,” he said.

Calexico resident Celia Romero agreed.

She goes to Mexicali once every week or every two weeks and goes into other parts of Mexico a couple times a year. She also said that those U.S. citizens affected by violence in Mexico are usually somehow involved in crime.

“For the most part, it’s not just innocent bystanders,” she said. “As long as you stay in the tourist area and don’t go off the beaten path, it’s pretty safe. Nothing has really stopped us from going down there.”

Source...

I think the current Travel Advisory is fairly benign and far from alarmist. Being aware of your surroundings and not traveling at night is sage advice- anywhere. This is a very nice group of rural people who have experienced safe travels while enjoying some of Baja's most public events. I hope their good fortune continues and statistically it should. But I always cringe when they go too far in a story and compare safety in Mexico or Baja to the USA. Not only is the murder rate higher, they would not feel good about the number of Homicide cases actually solved and prosecuted in Mexico.

The homicide rate for all of Mexico in 2012 was about 24 per 100,000 people. The rate for Rosarito Beach was 47.5, almost double the national Mexican murder rate and close to Detroit, MI (at 53.7), the most dangerous city in the USA for 2012. The bright side is the Rosarito Beach murder rate was 81.2 in 2011.



Homicides in Mexico increased in 2012: Amid drug war, Mexico homicide rate up for fourth straight year - latimes.com

"new data, released this week (Aug 2012) by Mexico’s statistics and geography institute, show that 27,199 people were killed in Mexico last year -- or 24 homicides per 100,000 people. The rate in 2007 was 8 per 100,000. Last year it was 23 per 100,000."

The problem with using just statistics in this kind of argument is that you fall into the trap that somewhere else on the planet always has a lower murder rate. In other words, if you are using the statistics to prove the danger of living in Mexico based on the US having a lower murder rate, then logic would counter that you should really move to one of the countries with the statistically lowest murder rate, if you truly want to feel "safe".

Iceland
Senegal
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Finland
Gambia
Mali
Saudia Arabia
Mauritania
Oman

None of those places really appeal to me so I think I'll stay put.

To me, the big difference is the level of police response/mechanism that one can expect down here in response to a crime or situation that justifies a call for help. There are many good, well intentioned people working in law enforcement in Mexico but they simply cannot offer the level of response that one would get up north of the border.

You need to be conscious of that fact and adjust to it.

We are lucky to live in a small, tight knit community and our awesome neighbors responded 100% that ugly day over a year ago. They saved our lives and played a critical role in helping to catch the perps.

Since that time we have better organized as a community and actually have plans in place for dealing with these kinds of potential events in the future. We have created a community phone book with everybody's cell phone numbers and now have regular night patrols, armed with a radio who is in contact with most of the homes here who have radios as well. We have regular community events (with food and beer of course) where we keep our contacts updated and the communication lines open.

It's a neighborhood watch program, Baja style.

I strongly suggest that those of you living down here consider similar type planning and prep, based on where you live...

I agree with BajaGringo in that you need good neighbors to make it down here. We went out of our way to talk with neighbors before we bought the lot and built our house. Living in a gated community can bring a false sense of security, it's the people who live around you that count. The prosecution and conviction rate for crime in Mexico is pathetic. When justice is not expected, people become apathetic.

Unfortunately, security and politics go together in my area. Who would visit or retire to a City where the murder rate was as bad as the worst city in the USA? No one living in Rosarito knows how bad things are until the stats come out a year later from elsewhere. Rosarito chased away the English language newspaper that reported real estate fraud and crime (Nancy Conroy and her Gringo Gazette) so no crime or bad news is reported locally. The only newspaper in town is run by the head of the Baja Image Committee- so no news gets out that would deter tourism or investors- or warn people of the true security situation they are living in. The current Chief of the Rosarito police can't pass his control and confidence test- but his relative is a PRI senator in Baja, so he's not going anywhere. That's unacceptable with a murder rate this high. Former TJ Mayor Hank Rhon will likely be the next governor of Baja, also PRI.

I remember when Alonzo had a carjack attempt on the via rapida in Playas de Tijuana how upset I was that the cameras installed specifically touted to protect tourists were gone. I went back with Alonzo to see which security camera would have captured the assault and all the cameras were gone and there were just empty brackets (the empty brackets along that route are still there). Turns out a contract dispute between Hank and the camera company caused them to repossess them all. Politics came before the security they promised was in place to protect us. Until Rosarito and TJ can make visitor security independent of their political alliances and ambitions, Americans will continue to be at great risk. jmho. The crime rate here is very high, crime news is non-existent, the Police are proven untrustworthy yet Rosarito pushes hard for everyone to present a positive image. It really can't get much worse that this- but the politically connected people are very happy with themselves.

Originally Posted by Woooosh

Former TJ Mayor Hank Rhon will likely be the next governor of Baja, also PRI.

Some well-connected amigos in the PRI party tell me that it is unlikely that he will be the PRI candidate for governor this time around. Time will tell...

Found an interesting statistic about the percentage of homicides that go unpunished in Mexico (58% overall). Stats are from 2007-2011.

From 2007-2011, 85% of Baja California homicides went unpunished. In 69% of the homicides, no one was detained at all.

(# of Homicides, # Detained, # Sentenced)

Impunes, 58% de los homicidios cometidos entre 2007 y 2011

It is hard to know what the real numbers are when you know there are many bodies never found...

Originally Posted by BajaGringo

It is hard to know what the real numbers are when you know there are many bodies never found...

The thousands of bodies not yet found sure won't make the stats any better.

Exactly. I have heard some down estimate that the real number may range as much as 20 to 30% higher. I don't think it's possible to even try to come close to a real number.