Security business booms in Mexico in midst of fear
Chris Hawley
Republic Mexico City Bureau
May. 2, 2007 08:49 PM

MEXICO CITY - It was enough to give James Bond envy: a veritable supermarket of security gadgets, all laid out for sale at a Mexico City trade fair aimed at addressing a rising sense of insecurity in Mexico.

There were smokescreen generators and security cameras hidden in pencil sharpeners. There were portable bomb sniffers, bulletproof doors and tiny tracking devices meant to foil kidnappers.

"This is a home electric fence," said vendor Miguel Martínez, waving at six silvery wires that snaked around his booth at the Expo-Seguridad Trade Fair. "You mount it on your outside wall. They're becoming very popular." advertisement




The security business is booming in Mexico, thanks to a seemingly unending war between drug cartels, a plague of kidnappings and a trend toward beheadings, grenade attacks and more powerful weapons. Though the overall murder rate has dropped over the past 10 years, Mexicans are increasingly worried about crime.

About 85 percent of Mexicans believe President Felipe Calderón's offensive against drug cartels in recent months will increase violence, and half believe it will never be controlled, according to a national door-to-door survey of 1,200 people by the Parametria polling company in March. The poll had a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.

"I think fear is growing," said Niv Yarimi, sales director for Guibor Private Security, an Israeli-owned guard company that saw its business triple in Mexico last year.

"There's a sense that organized crime is three steps ahead of the security services and the police."

A surge in housing construction and the dropping price of security cameras has also helped drive the boom, as more middle-class Mexicans are able to arm their homes with alarm systems, security companies say.

According to the trade group Latin American Security Association:


• The market for electronic security systems is growing 10 to 15 percent each year in Mexico, with 60 percent of the equipment imported from the United States.


• There are 400,000 security guards in Mexico.


• Four to 5 percent of Mexico's Gross Domestic Product is spent on security.

In the past three years, the number of security-system installers registered with the Mexican Association of Construction Installation Companies has risen 50 percent, according to Rodolfo Zamora, the group's operations manager.

Meanwhile, the number of exhibitors at Expo-Seguridad has soared, from 63 in 2003 to 185 at the 2007 event last week.


High-profile crime
Feeding Mexico's sense of insecurity is a two-year-old turf war between the Sinaloa Cartel of western Mexico and the Gulf Cartel of eastern Mexico. Shootouts with assault rifles and grenade launchers have become common in Nuevo Laredo, Acapulco, Monterrey and other points along cocaine-smuggling corridors.

In December, Calderón began sending thousands of troops and federal agents to quell the violence in western and northern Mexico.

"Mexico must not and will not fall into the hands of criminals," Calderón said last month. "We must employ all of the strength of the state to rescue our streets, our parks, our cities, our schools."

But killings resume as soon as the troops leave. And the slayings are becoming more gruesome, with some hit men decapitating their victims and posting the videos on Web sites like YouTube.

Meanwhile, Mexicans' confidence in their police has been eroded by assassinations of top lawmen in Tijuana, Nuevo Laredo, Agua Prieta and other cities.

Traffickers also killed at least nine journalists and kidnapped another three in 2006, making Mexico the second deadliest country for journalists after Iraq, according to Reporters without Borders.

Normal citizens, too, are often targeted for kidnappings, either for ransom or so kidnappers can force them to withdraw money from ATMs over several days.

Based on a 2006 survey, the Citizen's Institute for Studies on Insecurity estimated that more than 77,800 people in 16 of Mexico's biggest cities had been kidnapping victims. These estimates are considered to be more accurate than government numbers because only a fraction of crimes are reported to police in Mexico.At Expo-Seguridad, at least four companies offered tracking devices meant to counter kidnappers and carjackers.

One company, Enlace de Vida, was marketing a wristwatch-style "panic button" that executives can use to summon private security.

"Technology support for your security corps, to give you more confidence," a banner over the booth said.


Terrorism fears
Mexican government agencies and private companies are also becoming more aware of their vulnerability to terrorism, security experts say.

Petróleos Mexicanos, the state oil monopoly, has been ramping up security since al-Qaida issued a statement in February urging militants to attack Mexico, Canada and other suppliers of oil to the United States.

U.S. security rules are forcing Mexican airports to beef up their security, as well.

An armed uprising in the city of Oaxaca last year also raised fears of civil unrest in Mexico. During that clash, sympathizers set off bombs outside foreign-owned banks in Mexico City.

"This would have handled those bombs, no problem," said Luis Gómez, holding up a heavy black blanket sold by his company, Moro-Security. The "bomb-suppression blanket" is meant to be thrown over grenades and bombs until police arrive.


Cameras everywhere
Under pressure from citizens to crack down on crime, Mexico's federal government is paying for "urban security systems," networks of outdoor cameras monitored by computers, in 16 of the country's 31 states.

In Tijuana over the past two years, the city government has installed 320 cameras and 70 microphones tuned to detect gunfire.

The violence-riddled state of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas, announced plans in November for a statewide camera system it calls the Northern Border Program.

In Mexico City, tourists in the cobblestone colonial district are watched over by 100 security cameras installed in 2003 by Bradenton, Fla.-based GE Security. Each of the city's 16 boroughs has a network of cameras, too.

Soon, even the city's watchdogs will be watched. In January, Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard announced that the city would install cameras in 70 prosecutors' and detective offices to cut down on police corruption.

Whether the cameras have had much effect is unclear. In Mexico City, for example, murders leveled off between 2001 and 2005 but crime rose 25 percent, according to the Citizen's Institute for Studies on Insecurity. The increase came despite new security systems, public and private.

But security industry officials say the increase in their sales shows Mexicans are at least trying to fight back.

"At the rate that Mexico is growing, I don't know how easily you can reduce crime," said Guillermo Palma, Mexican sales director for U.S. equipment maker Pelco.

"But with (security system sales) people are taking the initiative and doing what they can," he said. "The culture of the Mexican has changed: 'Why should I wait for something bad to happen to me?' "



Reach the reporter at chris.hawley@arizonarepublic.com.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... n-ON.html#