www.CostaRicaTicas.com

Wingman & I were having cocktails in the DR last night & then went to dinner for about an hour. After returning about 9:15 or so the place was surrounded by cops & we were told we couldn't go in for about a 1/2 hr. We headed over to the KL to wait it out. I later talked to 1 of the girls in there at the time & she said the police were in there checking all id's & hauling girls off. Was anybody in there at the time the coppers arrived to see it go down?

_________________
"cuz I'm a back-door man" Jim Morrison-1969

Oh wow, I must have left right before they came in, I was there right around that time. Were they checking ID's of gringos too, or just the chicas?

Due to arrive in ten days so I hope their immigration policy is the same as ours, catch and release.

A friend who had another friend caught in the raid,told me that there were about 15 agents running around the DR. (wonder what they were "really" looking for) says that they took away THREE GUYS who had some drugs on them and a grand total of ONE CHICA.

So it looks like Lovely Laura has now gotten around to harassing the DR. I wonder who is next.

Laura Gee do you think she is responsible for the raids at HDR that happened in previous years This is not a first time happening

No, but you sure can expect more more of them now, she doesn't need a new law for that.

So far it has been about like any other year, 5 or 6 times a t the DR, twice at SL and HLH


BKTUNA/BOyd
I am never going home

_________________
BKTUNA/Boyd
I am never going home

The raid occured on my last night in town. I was sitting at the tables facing the monkey bar but I was facing the blue marlin bar. I had a lovely Domincana sitting with me. I wasn't paying any attention to what was going on. She jumped up all of a sudden and headed towards the waitress area. I was somewhat puzzled as to what was going on. She then went into the bar area(where the bartenders work) beating feet so to say. She must have went all the way to the other side and escaped to the ladies rooms. I looked to my left and saw the Immigration officials at the door and one inside checking ID's. One official finally reached me and asked for my documents. I pulled out a laminated card with my passport copy. He said that it wasn't enough. I turned the card over and showed him my entry stamp. He said that was fine.

They were giving some of the gringo's a hard time by lecturing them for not having there passports, or copies with entry stamps, but didn't seem to haul any of them away.

In the end my Dominicana dodged her way around between the bathroom and barstools enough that they never caught up to her. She finally made her way out shortly after the raid was over. Hell I didn't even know she wasn't in the country legally.

This was my first time being questioned by Immigration officails in 16 trips.

Firedude

_________________
Life is a short, meaningless journey filled with emptiness and pain. Get all the pu*sy you can!

thanks for the update Firedude. I've been watching all the reports on this sort of thing since I'll be making my first trip within a month. I'm still somewhat unsure about whether or not you should carry your passport, or a copy of the info page and stamp.
I'd rather leave my passport in the safe...since I have spent many a morning trying to figure out where I may have left my credit card.

So, I know the situation has changed...if I had gone a year ago, it looks like the consensus would have been "keep a copy on you, leave the passport in the safe". Now it's not as clear. Should I carry it?

Your passport is worth several hundred to a few thousand dollars to some crackhead with nothing to lose. Think about it.

hey, thanks Bball.

I have thought about it, and I've read many posts that have suggested to keep it on you, and many posts that have said to carry a copy. The recent posts imply that the "carry a copy" deal may end up costing a full day clearing it up, which is why I am asking. I'm only going to be there for 4 days, and if I have to spend one of them in a line because I didn't do the right thing, I'll be annoyed.

I guess if I think about the chance of being asked for it vs. the chance it will get stolen. Yeah, silly.

I'd still just carry a copy WITH A COPY OF THE ENTRY STAMP. If they run raids 6 times per year and you're only going to be in town for 4 days, that means there is less than a 7% chance there will even be an immigration raid while you are there. Add to that the fact that apparently quite a few guys were in town during this latest one but were NOT at the HDR/BM when this latest episode happened and it becomes even less likely that you'd be at the wrong place at the wrong time even IF a raid went down while you were in town. Add to that the fact that a raid just happened and you are going in just a couple of weeks and the odds that they will have another raid so soon after the last one means that you'd be even less likely than that one would even occur while you'll be there. Add to that the fact that these guys don't really think there are many gringos at these places who are there illegally and are mainly concerned with checking the CHICA's ID's, which are much more likely to turn up illegal aliens (though that may be changing as originally I believe they didn't really bother to check the gringo ID's at all). Of course, this assumes that these raids are relatively evenly spaced rather than done in a back to back fashion and that the number of raids is not on the increase, but I don't think those assumptions would be really that far off. All told, for you, I'm guessing that the odds of a raid going down at one of these places WHILE you are in the bar and you ACTUALLY getting caught up and arrested for not having your actual passport has to be something well under 1%

The above analysis also ignores the possibility of being hassled by the police on the street. Personally, I've NEVER been hassled by police on the street. Maybe I've just been lucky or maybe this is another area that has increased greatly in the last year. I think part of it is not walking around in an area and at a time where your presence might be considered suspect (ie late at night in a noted sex tourism area like the Gulch). Of course, one probably shouldn't be walking around these areas at these times any way for OTHER reasons (ie getting robbed by the criminals on the OTHER side of the law), so if you take cabs between the SL and HDR and other places at night you'll probably also greatly cut down whatever risk there might be of being stopped and hassled by the cops on the street.

In short, despite the more recent developments regarding a copy of your passport photo and stamp pages not being sufficient SOMEtimes for SOME of the cops, IMHO the risk of getting your passport lost or stolen while carrying it around still exceeds the risk that you will get in trouble for only having a copy.

A couple of other comments:

1) Were the 3 guys arrested for having illegal drugs on them gringos or ticos? And if they were gringos, what sort of idiot gringo carries around illegal drugs while in a foreign country that has harsh prisons and harsh drug laws like CR AND especially into a bar that is known to have periodic raids?

2) The 3 drug arrests aside, if this raid involving 15 gov't agents only netted ONE chica for illegal immigration (and past raids were similarly unproductive in that regard), isn't that a pretty piss poor use of resources? Perhaps if that ONE chica was dealing drugs or involved with robberies and other crimes I might see where it would still be worthwhile, but this was a chica whose only OTHER "crime" (apart from her illegal immigration status) was being a prostitute (not actually illegal in CR) and taking money from Gringos in exchange for services. She wasn't being trafficked or pimped. She wasn't stealing from anybody or at least wasn't being charged for that. And she had a reasonably steady source of income coming from foreign sources and thus, unlike some other illegal aliens, was not really any sort of drain on the CR economy due to her use of their social welfare system, etc. (unless their concern was that she was competing with tico prostitutes for gringo dollars).

3) IMHO, these raids have NOTHING to do with law enforcement effectiveness and efficiency and have EVERYTHING to do with politics. Do something high profile and dramatic involving the use of many officers and if Canal 7 happens to be along with their cameras to shine their brights lights on this "seedy and disreputable" business of sex tourism then so much the better. Harass the sex tourism businesses, making it harder for them to conduct business as usual, first by going after the chicas on the flimsy excuse that some of them are here illegally (sort of like going after MP's for fire code violations and not providing wheelchair access), and when that didn't prove to be harassment enough going after the gringo sex tourists themselves even though in virtually all cases their entry documentation winds up being in perfect order, albeit not always actually on them.

4) These spot checks of gringos mainly seem to happen in downtown SJ, particularly around the Gulch, and mainly at night when most of the gringos about in those areas are male sex tourists. Is it because this is a demographic that is more likely to be in the country illegally than other types of gringo tourists? I doubt it. I wonder how many eco-tourist types have been similarly detained elsewhere in CR for "only having a copy of their passport" or even stopped and questioned about it at all (apart from around border areas)? I'm guessing very few if any.

Pro, my friend, as usual you have provided a very interesting statistical analysis for this problem. However one point that you failed to include is, THIS IS HOW THE COPS SUPPLEMENT THEIR INCOME. So the who,what,where,when and how the cops hassle the gringos is in direct proportion to their "return on investment (in time)"

Just a thought:

Not making many trips these days I fall into that seven percentile group. Hopefully next year I'll improve my numbers. Concerning the question about carrying a passport or a copy. I'm beginning to wonder if the issue is not the copy but the quality of the copy. I completely understand the lack of confidence in the integrity of the local law enforcement. Although I will say that in the 13 years or so that I've been traveling to Costa Rica have never had a negative experience with their law enforcement. As one of our members just related he presented a laminated copy of his passport with a good quality reproduction of his entry stamp on the back and was told it was acceptable. I wonder if he had presented a paper black and white reproduction of poor quality what the response would have been. You know there is such a thing in this world as Fake IDs.

SinCity: thank you for the report and wish I had been there.

Lee

_________________
PS: DO NOT SEND MONEY!

Thanks for the detailed analysis...yeah, I think carrying a good copy and not putting ourselves in a situation where we are "asking" for trouble is the wise approach. Take cabs everywhere, be polite to the policia should the occasion arise, and always carry "propina" just in case