Crime in Cancun

And as I stated on the thread about that news article out of TX about the new Drug Laws here.... I came here from Philadelphia, Kiladelphia is the wonderful name it is refered to now. Random people being killed in the Subway....random people in nightclubs being shot up. Atleast once a week and Elderly person is beaten and robbed inside their own home. A friend and former coworker this past week on fb posted that her neighbor, a pastor in her church, was stabbed multiple times getting into his car. The list goes on and on and on. These are all random acts of violence that from what I gather don't really happen here. That is based on posts made in the forums when tourists ask about safety. If you keep your nose clean, you have nothing to worry about.
BTW...the New Jersey beaches a few years ago had the same problems with Drugs on the beaches...but included were used needles.
RG...I hate reading the horror stories that you have, I REALLY do. I, in no way want you to feel this has turned into an attack on you. And you have alot more expierience here then I and a few others. But these things and worse really do happen all over. Shoot, my Mom was involved in Politics on the State and National levels most of her life....corruption is the name of the game. She had to go live overseas for months when I was 5 yrs old because of a situation. But since this is a 3rd world country, I feel they don't care to hide it, prosecute it or change it any time soon.

 

I can't add too much about crime in Cancun but I can add what I learned while visiting last week.

I sat down next to a guy on the park bench and I was a little close but definetely not "close" and he jumped over like I was made out acid. I don't know if that was because I was American or its cultural in Mexico.

I did notice that I did get a LOT better reception from people in general when i tried to speak a little Spanish and did not sound like I was speaking it for the first time. I'm only at the 1st grade level but it really makes a difference when you try to speak the language.

I did notice that the "average" american was so much louder than every other person on the buses. You could pick out the americans every time

 

LOL...I was about to bitch slap this girl on the bus yesterday. I was in the HZ, and this girls was wasted. I guess she was staying at the NH Krystal, and when the bus didn't stop close enough...the stop is at the up a little ways, she seriously lost control...screaming at the bus driver. The guy she was with kept saying over and over to the driver...Our hotel was back there dude. I was never so embarrassed to be an American.

 

Obviously you do not sugarcoat reality. If you did, this discussion wouldn't be going on on your site. My point was that I do think the tourist industry, in general, definitely does not want people to discuss this issue in English.

It is telling that the posts in my blog which have gotten the most visits ever are ones having to do with safety in Cancun. People are searching for this information in English, and not much is written.

Tourists are safe here, I believe that. I have seen about 150 death certificates of foreigners who died here over a 3 year period (2006-2008). All died from diseases of excess (mostly heart attacks), as they would have at home, or they died from drowning or car accidents. Not one died from anything crime-related.

My points about safety here are that:

1) if you don't read the papers here, or dismiss everything said in them, then you can't fairly compare the crime rate here to the crime rate elsewhere.

Yes, there are safer and less safe areas here. Steve definitely lives in one of the safe areas here, as do I, as do most posters here who live here. Is the crime as bad here as in Nottingham, maybe not, or maybe it's different. But I recommend you read the papers so you can find that out.

2) Organized crime has a strong hold on the businesses here, and on the economy here. I think that that hold is stronger than most on here realize.

It's certainly easy to ignore organized crime if it doesn't produce in-your-face violence that effects you. But is it healthy to ignore it? I think some of you will argue that it is, but I disagree. If something shifts for the criminals here, and their business goes south suddenly, then this place is populated by people used to making a nice living outside the law. I'm just saying that I think there's potential here for things to get out of control quickly, because there's already a criminal mindset present in such a large part of the population.

The last time I stuck my neck out on this board many of you let me get hurt. Maybe I should just back off and shut up before that happens again. But I think that by not reading the local papers some of you are missing the writing on the wall.

Personally I'm happier when I'm comfortable with what's going on around me, and part of being comfortable with it means knowing about it.

 

RG, I think your assumption that others are not aware of crime here, perhaps because they don't read the local papers, is unwarranted. I read the papers, here, and most of the people I know who live here do too.

The discussion here, about crime, has more to do with how one responds to what one knows, than about what one knows. We can all acknowledge that there are good people, and bad people, and lots in between who live here, and there's plenty enough crime of all types to go around. This awareness does not cause us to deviate from our chosen life course.

For the most part, we've lived our lives- those from the U.S., for example- with crime being part of the background noise we lived with. Whatever adjustment we made to it, psychologically, we brought with us when we came here.

 

Generally, I read the papers and generally, there are some pretty ugly things reported. One thing that our local paper doesn't have, is a crime by crime breakdown (let alone map) on a weekly basis. I always found that to be the most useful section in the paper back home.

There are definitely murders and kidnappings and the such here in Playa, and RG is completely correct, that reading the paper is the only way to know about it. That also means 99% of the tourists won't know. I do think though, that a lot of tourists realize that they only see the happy side of things here, and do not want to know about the other side. In that sense, keeping the gritty details minimized in the press (or simply unavailable to non-Spanish speakers) satisfies most people.

As far as how bad crime actually is here... I don't know, honestly. If every murder and rape is in the papers (I doubt it) then the violent crime rate here is definitely lower than say, my hometown of Kansas City (as it should be, since Playa is considerably smaller.) My hunch is that non-violent crimes (burglary, etc.) are probably higher here, but without good statistics that's just speculation.

In the end, I really only know 2 things:
(1) We've never been the target of any criminal activity nor felt directly threatened, while I have had numerous encounters with the seedy side in the US.
(2) I do feel slightly more unsafe here in general, despite the above. Maybe that's just paranoia (we have contingency plans for if/when bad things happen), or maybe it's not directly about the crime rates, but my lack of faith in the police and judicial systems, as well as my being in a foreign country and having less resources on hand to deal with some kind of catastrophic situation.

There are some nights here where the odd noise or 'gut' feeling makes me leery and that never happened in the US, despite being subject to a few unfortunate encounters, and I can't really explain that.

 

Two very bad things this weekend that could effect tourism to Mexico again.
14 people were shot dead in the town of Acapulco - 4 were beheaded.
Today 3 people connected to the US consulate in Juarez were killed.( 2 US citizens and one married to a US citizen)
Luckily these things rarely happen here but it does give Mexico a bad name.
I feel safe for the most part being in Cancun.I have heard there have been quite a few assaults on women around Parque de Palapas so take care in that area.

Tracey

 

I have no idea who here reads the papers and who does not. I certainly don't think that everyone does not. Jim is always quoting from the papers for us, clearly he reads the paper everyday. I'm just advocating that people do.

Subjectively I feel far less safe in Cancun than I ever felt anywhere I lived in the US. But I lived in places that were affluent where I didn't even need to lock my house. I had one guy try to steal my car from my driveway in the US, but my dog got him. That was the closest I ever came there to being a victim of a crime.

Here I've had more bone-chilling moments of awareness about crime than I think is healthy. I have not been a victim of crime here, but I cannot even count how many people I know who have. We are among the only people we know who have not been robbed here. And perhaps if we didn't have a 24 hour guard and a high gate and dogs we would have been robbed. I know several people here who have been kidnapped, or have had kidnap attempts on them. And since I've been here several acquaintances have been murdered by organized crime, including the guy who was the head of ASUR at the airport. If someone murders the head of the airport then there's a problem.

I spent a few days in Juarez recently. My subjective impression of Juarez was that it wasn't that much more dangerous than Cancun. I felt more wary there, but not that much more wary. I saw more armed police there, but only about 20% more than here. I held my purse a little more tightly than I do here, a little bit. Yet Juarez is a war zone, and it's out of control. How much credence should we put in those gut feelings that tell us how safe a place is? Do I believe my gut when it says that Cancun is more similar to Juarez than I would like to believe? You guys believe your gut feelings.

Whenever I go back to the US I play a game with myself...I count how many cops I see on my drive to the Cancun airport...Then I count how many days I have to be in the US before I see the same number of cops. Even when I spend weeks there I never see as many cops there as I see here in just one 25 minute drive to the airport. Last year I was there for two weeks and saw only one single cop the entire time. What does that say about things here? Cops here are ineffective, yes, but they are everywhere. Is this a good thing? Is this a sign of a peaceful place?

 

I guess the surprising thing to me is that you seem to be surprised to find that Mexico has a lot of crime. It's been a country with high unemployment; 40% of the population living in poverty, and the crime to go with it, for as long as I've known the word, "Mexico".

Only thing that's changed in my awareness of the place is the government fighting back- against drug lords and organized crime- in the recent past. That, for me, is something new, unexpected, and welcome.