As Tijuana’s Homicides Mount, Baja California Launches Anti-Crime Campaign Sandra Dibble - San Diego Union-Tribune
go to original June 13, 2017

Baja California Gov. Francisco Vega de Lamadrid, left, during a ceremony Monday in Tijuana launching a statewide "Crusade for Security." (Gobierno de Baja California)

With Tijuana’s homicides mounting, Baja California Gov. Francisco Vega de Lamadrid on Monday endorsed a series of crime-fighting measures — including expanding the military’s role in the fight against organized crime.

The multi-pronged plan, which Vega said was six months in the making, was presented as a statewide “Crusade for Security” that seeks to bring together all levels of government in the state with members of the private sector in battling crime.

“We are living through difficult moments and facing complex challenges,” the governor told hundreds gathered outside a police substation near the working-class neighborhood of Camino Verde, whose residents face some of the city’s highest crime rates.

A former mayor of Tijuana, the governor is a member of Mexico’s National Action Party more than halfway through his six-year term. He has come under growing pressure from private sector leaders to take action to reduce crime statewide, but nowhere more so than in the state’s largest city, Tijuana.

With more than 1.8 million residents, the city has seen an unprecedented number of homicides in recent months — crimes that state investigators largely attribute to in-fighting among neighborhood drug dealers. As of Monday, the state had registered 670 homicides in Tijuana since January; so far this month the tally has reached 69.

“Up to a couple of months ago, there was still a certain state of denial — that the problem of insecurity did not exist, and that everything was under control,” said Juan Manuel Hernández Niebla, head of the Tijuana Citizens Council for Public Safety.

The effort spans three major categories — professionalization of police forces, the pursuit of justice and crime prevention, each with a series of more than a dozen specific measures, Hernández Niebla said.

Read the rest at San Diego Union-Tribune

Related: Cabo San Lucas Beheadings: Cartel Killings Traumatize Resort Town as Heads Found in Cooler (mySA)

Related: Los Cabos Not Alone in Terms of Insecurity (Mexico News Daily)

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