and we wonder WHY there is so much vigilantism in Mexico.... My neighbor caught a 15 year-old (allegedly 15 anyway..) in the back area of his place. Just by chance he was downstairs and heard a noise. We suspect he was either after copper pipes off the house or the bicycle that was there. Luckily for the wannabe thief, we are civilized folks and just held him until the cops showed up (which took 30+ minutes... next time we'll say we have a guy with a sack of money behind our house... :roll: ) Had he been caught in say Rancho Viejo or some other area towards the outside of town, he would have been a severely beaten 15 year-old or a corpse. As for those creeps who do the virtual kidnappings or threats to families they should all be locked in a cage for life, as those crimes cause untold psychological damage to the victims. :evil:
Hubby went to the meeting last night, he said there were about ten people there. One man has kind of taken charge and is leading the pack. Basically we're calling for a "Neighbourhood Watch" kind of thing here, everyone watching out for everyone else, taking care of security issues (lots of light etc) and they want to put up signs saying "We're Watching". We're going to contact the people on other streets (so far this was just about our little stretch) and get everyone working together with eyes wide open. People who don't look like they belong in the neighbourhood will be challenged and asked why they are here and if the answers aren't good enough the police will be called. Yes, it happens everywhere but right now it's obvious that this SM is a target. Coming from Canada, I never worried about guns and I rarely locked my door so feeling this insecure is new to me. We haven't been the victims of extortion, but we have friends who have, and that is something that definitely didn't happen in Canada! Here's a great Mexican site on security, good advice on extortions etc.... http://www.notecalles.org.mx/index.asp (Since we're on the subject, three people from my work have been robbed at knifepoint in the last week or two on Tulum Avenue, watch your backs, keep your cel phones and money hidden away).
My building has been hit twice this week for copper. I found out the hard way, when I ran out of water. Luckily, I was home and heard my pump running for an extended period of time. I was able to turn it off at the breaker, before it burned up. They stole all the copper pipes off our building, and the one next to it. I don't know about the rest of the neighborhood...ggguuuaaa!!!!!
I never lived with my doors open, neither in Paris nor in Toronto although in secure areas, but you scare me, Kelly. When they leave your SM, they can come here. So last night I turned my alarm on, and will do it every night. There are plenty of lights outside the condo, but what is the use at 3 or 4 am? They stole our copper pipes in the middle of the day! There is not much traffic here. We have a gate but the lock is broken and nobody cares to change it :roll: My windows on the beach side are often open (in the living room), a/c in my bedroom, so I won't hear, and there are no bars, so welcome, guys! It is not Sept-hambre yet, though will it get worse?
We are also noticed that the crimes are higher over the last few years. When we arrived at Cancun 10 years ago it was so quiet here, but things have changed ... So we are also thinking in how we can get safe our home. The best "alarm equipment" is a dog or better two. The dogs can hear everything, even the littlest noise. "Current robbers" are scared of big dogs. So the second thing are good protectores on the windows. A security alarm equipment with contacts on doors and windows and a alarm to your cell phone is also recommended. You can also put cameras inside and outside your home and via the internet connection you can watch from far what is going on in your home while you are not at home. And the last thing: it is legal to have a gun in your home for self defense (article 10 of the mexican constitution). You can buy a gun, the types are restricted, you have to get a permission from the authority and so you can use it in case of emergency. I think y won´t have any scruple to use it in such a case. :evil:
I think if I were truly worried about it I would get the neighborhood to invest in cameras, big obvious highly visible cameras watching the street and the houses on it, mounted on various roof tops in the area. You can get a simple camera kit with digital recorder for around 3000 pesos on mercadolibre.com, if every fifth house or so had a few cameras set up one of them would have to catch something if another holdup occurs, and the thugs would never be able to break/steal all of the cameras or find all of the recording boxes since they would be in different houses.... You can even get some dummy cameras too to make an even more impressive show of surveillance. I think that alone would put a stop to most of the BS right there as they might not care about one or two cameras, but if a street has 20 cameras looking at every square inch and they are all hooked to different houses so they couldn't steal all of the tapes/recorder boxes, they would have to move on to an easier area. It would be a bit of an investment at first, but if you divided it among the street and look at that cost vs. the continued robberies, hold ups, and fear, its not really too much at all!
Sheesh, we can't catch a break these days. Hubby's parents got "the call" today, someone saying they had kidnapped one of his sisters. Everyone's ok of course, but it sure shakes you up to hear about this happening so much. Here's a link on what to do if you get the extortion call.... http://www.notecalles.org.mx/consejos/consejos_de_seguridad_para_prevenir_extorsion.asp
We had no electricity from about 3:40 AM (went to sleep at 3) come to find out that some idiot stole the electric cable from the entire street. May the moron fry in the near future.
