I love Baja California. Some of my earliest memories are of Tijuana and Ensenada. No question I am dating myself, but that dates back to the early 50s.
The reason that I believe Tijuana is unsafe is due to the preponderance of news stories which report the violence; due to my discussions with people who live there (I vacation in San Diego for the month of July); and due to other visits with people who are responsible for safety and security on the US side of the border.
It may be safe but I believe the perponderance of evidence reveals it is not safe. By perponderance I mean convincing and probably true and accurate. Based on that, I don't feel the need to risk a visit at this time.
Here are seom examples from the news and a few other sources:
30 Nov 2008: Vicious drug turf war turns Mexican border town of Tijuana into a killing zone
The four men in bulletproof vests, Kalashnikovs held casually at their sides, crossed the street to Tijuana's Crazy Banana pool hall so calmly that onlookers presumed they were undercover police officers – until they heard the gunfire and screams.
- Five billiards players gunned down in popular downtown bar
- Nearly 300 people have been killed since late-September (2008) – many mutilated, tortured and beheaded in gruesome terror tactics copied from Iraq's brutal conflict.
- Attack in a nightclub popular with students left five young people dead or dying
- Hit squad stormed a private hospital and killed a patient who was being treated for gunshot wounds
- Armed men opened fire on a car parked outside a popular US-owned discount warehouse, killing a woman and seriously injuring a man.
- There were 685 in Tijuana alone which makes it one of the most dangerous countries in the world.
- Mexico's drug war death tally of more than 4,000 this year.
Source: Telegraph.co.uk
05 Oct 2008: After a
particularly violent week in Tijuana that has left 54 dead in a fierce cartel power struggle, experts on both sides of the border fear the worst is yet to come.
Source: San Diego Tribune
01 Jan 2009: TIJUANA, Mexico - Mexico started off the New Year with a string of shoot-outs, killings and the kidnapping of a 12-year-old boy. Police in Tijuana said the boy was abducted when he ran to his home to pick something up for a New Year's Eve dinner at his grandparents house a few blocks away.
01 Jan 2009: Also in Tijuana, less than an hour into 2009, 26-year-old Saul Tamayo Hernandez was celebrating the New Year outside his house with his family when gunmen arrived and killed him.
Also from the AP: Officials estimate that more than 5,300 people died across Mexico in organized crime-related slayings in the first 11 months of 2008.
Just over New Years weekend 2008-09
- In La Huerta, a shootout between rival families at a New Year's party left four dead
- In Monterrey, prosecutors accused former Nuevo Leon state policeman Aldo Perales, 34, of leading a gang of bank robbers and participating in more than 30 robberies
- In Torreon federal police captured two alleged hit men after the suspects threw a hand grenade at police and soldiers who had cornered them at a house.
The Public Safety Department said more grenades, pistols and assault rifles were found inside the home. The department said the two suspects were members of the Gulf drug cartel and were wanted on homicide charges in the United States.
- Police in western Mexico arrested a farmworker who allegedly hacked a doctor to death with a machete for refusing to treat his son.
- Prosecutors in the Pacific coast state of Jalisco say 25-year-old suspect Ricardo Garcia Barajas has confessed to killing physician Laura Avila. Avila was found dead in the rural health clinic she was staffing on Dec. 26.
- Officials estimate that more than
5,300 people died across Mexico in organized crime-related slayings in the first 11 months of 2008.
In
three days there were 37 murders in Tijuana
The city, like others in Mexico, is in the grips of a savage war between drug cartels who want control of the drug trade in the region. Juarez, across the
Texas border from El Paso, has seen more than 1,700 murders this year because of the cartel wars.
In the past month alone, more than 200 people have been murdered in Tijuana and it was disclosed that three police officers were among nine decapitated bodies discovered Sunday in a poor section of the city.
Four of the 37 people killed were Ch*ldren caught in the gunfire.
Source: Star Telegram.com (Ft Worth, TX)
04 Dec 2007: TECATE, Mexico - Tecate police chief Juan Soriano in the early hours of the morning and shot him repeatedly in the face and torso as he slept in bed with his wife.
Source: Rueters
Three Tijuana police chiefs have been murdered: Arturo Ochoa Palacios, Isaac Sanchez Perez, and Alfredo de la Torre Márquez.
Former commander of the Federalies in Tijuana, is under investigation for the murder of State Prosecutor Hodin Armando Gutierrez Rico who was accidentally shot 150 times while standing in front of his house, and then tragically, and certainly accidentally, run over by a large truck.
Source: U.S. Border Patrol website
Violence and drug-trafficking have become such a major threat to Latin America that the presidents of Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala and Panama met in Panama to discuss it.
Mexico tallied a record number of drug-related killings last year.
Source: CNN website
25 Dec 2007: ROSARITO, Mexico — Surfers talk endlessly about waves — their size, their intensity, their roll. And crime waves are no exception.
In surf shops, on bluffs and even out in the ocean while waiting for the water to crest, Baja California’s surfers have been rehashing a series of recent armed attacks on foreigners, many of whom had been frequenting the beaches here just south of Tijuana for years.
“It’s all we talk about,†said Doug Wampler, 55, who has surfed Baja’s waves since 1967. “We analyze each incident and we wonder if we’re going to be next.â€
Source: New York Times
HOMICIDES in 2003 per 100,000
1. Columbia 63
2. South Africa 51
3. Jamaica 32
4. Venezuela 32
5. Russia 19
6. Mexico 13
7. Lithuania 10
8. Estonia 10
9. Latvia 10
10. Belarus 9
Source: “Death by Murder†by Ben Best
Comparisons:
13 Jan 2009: San Diego, immediately north of Tijuana: Murders decreased by 2 (-7 percent) from 28 in 2007 to 26 in 2008; 2.8 percent decrease in violent crime; 10 percent decline in property crime
Source: 10News.com; FBI Uniform Crime Report
24 Dec 2007: Los Angeles is on track to end the year with fewer than 400 homicides for the first time in nearly four decades – a hopeful milestone for a city so long associated with gangs, drive-by shootings and sometimes random violence.
Source: Los Angeles Times
- Across the U.S., homicides decreased by 2.7 percent (2007)
- New York City down 20 percent, to 496 homicides (2007)
- Los Angeles down 19 percent, to 380 homicides (2007)
- Among the largest cities in the US (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia and San Diego) the murder rate dropped 9.8 percent (2007)
Source: U.S. News and World Report (11 June 2008); Police Executive Research Forum.
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