Thread: Tijuana officials seek safe weekend

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Tijuana officials seek safe weekend

By Anna Cearley
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 2, 2005

As Tijuana braces for the tourist influx of the Labor Day weekend, the city is addressing concerns about public safety by posting video cameras along heavily visited Avenida Revolucion and by encouraging tourists to file complaints if they encounter police extortion.

Guillermo González Smith, deputy commander of the Tijuana Municipal Police, said at a news conference in San Diego yesterday that the video-camera system recently has helped police officers arrest criminals, locate stolen cars and prevent vandalism.

He also said the city is trying to dissuade police from resorting to bribes by raising their salaries 100 percent over the next few years. On average, a city officer currently earns about $750 a month.

"If you have a police officer with a family of five and earning $700, it's more likely for him to extort out of necessity than anything else," González Smith said.

The news conference was an attempt by Tijuana city officials to counter what they characterize as an overemphasis on the city's drug-trafficking and kidnapping violence.

Much of the presentation focused on the city's economic dynamics. However, most of the queries fielded by the panel of Tijuana officials concerned public security.

"Lately, all the violence down there has been isolated (and limited) to a single business – drugs – and it's between people fighting for that business," said Alfonso Bustamante, the city's director of binational affairs. He said such incidents don't typically affect tourists.

What affects tourists the most, Bustamante said, are other types of crime, those involving tourists as alleged law-breakers or as victims.

Last year, the San Diego Police Department announced its officers would start taking reports from returning tourists who claim to be victims of crime in Baja California, including police extortion.

Those reports are forwarded to the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana. Consulate spokeswoman Liza Davis said eight to 10 such reports a month are received from the San Diego Police Department, ranging from domestic violence to rape to child molestation. The consulate facilitates follow-up contacts between the alleged victims and Mexican police agencies.

Davis, who did not participate in the news conference, said that since November 2004, the consulate has received 11 allegations of Mexican police extortion in reports relayed by the San Diego Police Department and in complaints made directly to the consulate.

That number is about the same as for the previous year, when the consulate began documenting police-extortion complaints, Davis said.

"We know this figure is only a portion of those that actually happened," she said.

González Smith said accusations of extortion have actually decreased based on the reports from San Diego police, but he was unable to cite numbers. He said Tijuana is also cracking down on police extortion by punishing officers through demotions, and, in flagrant cases, by firing them.

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I was just shaken down by the Tijuana police on Tuesday.

I was Tijuana for the very first time and within 10 minutes of being there I was taken to the police station for a shake down. I'm not kidding, 10 minutes! They saw me taking pictures with my digital camera and that's all it took. All I had on me was 36 dollars so they threatend to lock me up for 24 hrs unless I had money wired to me. Eventually they let me go after I paid them 30 dollars. I'm surprised they didn't take my camera. I'm lucky to get out of there.

The corrupt Mexican police will never arrest their own for corruption. That will never happen. They’re criminals wearing police costumes.

Do not go to Tijuana or any of these Mexican border towns if you care about your own safety. I fear the Mexican police far more than the criminals that are there just waiting to cross into the US.

I found it funny the article mentioned only 11 people reported being extorted by the police. I have a feeling it is much higher and few people even bother reporting it because they figure the police department is too corrupt to stop it.

Originally Posted by Brian503a

I found it funny the article mentioned only 11 people reported being extorted by the police. I have a feeling it is much higher and few people even bother reporting it because they figure the police department is too corrupt to stop it.

No kidding. There were about 12 Mexican police that witnessed my shakedown. After they let me go the last thing I was going to do was find another police station to report what happened to me.

An Vincente Fox gets upset when we declare a traveler advisor to Nuevo Loredo because of the gang wars and murders. What a joke that country is.