The city of Mexicali reported during May the highest crime rate in Baja California with 319 crimes for every 100,000 residents, said the Citizen Public Safety Council.
The rate was well above the largest city in the state— Tijuana, that reported a rate of 228.
According to the council’s criminal semaphore Mexicali has red lights in crimes like homicides and false imprisonment.
Mexicali’s high crime areas are Downtown, colonia Pueblo Nuevo neighborhood, Colonia Nueva subdivision, and Colonia Industrial in the city’s northend, as well as colonia Independencia and Colonia Hidalgo in mid-city, and the unincorporated area of González Ortega and Valle del Pedregal neighborhood in the southeast.
Vehicle theft has been reported any hour and any day of the week. Almost all neighborhoods and subdivisions suffer from this crime, the council said.
Home burglaries have reported decreases with Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays with the highest numbers of reported incidents.
However, residential robberies are mainly reported on Sundays.
Business burglaries were reported particularly Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. The Downtown area had the largest number of reports with 10.
In business robberies activity authorities said these crimes are committed every day of the week from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m., especially in southern and western Mexicali.
Thursdays had the largest reports of homicides with most of the cases reported in rural areas.
According to the report vehicle theft, business burglaries and public way robberies reported increases, while home burglaries decreased.
Homicides doubled in the first five months of the year. From January to May the council registered 66 cases compared to 33 in the same period of 2016. This is the highest amount of murders reported since 2012 and the second largest in 14 years.
Hunting issues addressed
State and federal authorities met Monday to address issues raised during last year hunting season.
Baja California Environmental Protection Secretary said the upcoming season opens Aug. 25 in rural Mexicali from 7 a.m. until 11 a.m. and from 2:30 p.m. until half an hour before sunset.
“We have had reports regarding hunters who reuse the hunting belts that allow them to hunt a certain amount of animals, taking illegal advantage of their permits,” said Natural Resources Director Sergio Caldera. “To avoid this we determined that permits will be valid for 27 days for the hunting of all species.”
Authorities will monitor hunters regionally all over Mexicali Valley to calculate animal population in unregistered areas.
Hunters obtain permits through private companies called Management Units for Wildlife Conservation, known in Spanish as UMAs.
Residents urged to use police hotlines properly
During the first five months of the year 5 percent of the emergency calls made to law enforcement agencies in Baja California were false, a state official said.
Undersecretary of the state Public Safety System Cristian Colosio said between January and May residents made 2.3 million calls to the 9-1-1 or 0-8-9 police hotlines. Of those 120,717 were false.
Colosio said this type of calls increase during school final tests period.
The official said these calls cause delays to emergency agencies, put people lives in risk and spend resources in the display of patrol cars, fire machines and ambulances.
Colosio said authorities launched an Education campaign at schools, businesses and communities to prevent residents from non-sense dialing police hotlines.
