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I was appalled to read Scott Oliver’s opinion piece the other day, “Costa Rica Crime is so Terrible That…,” about how he’s never been robbed in Costa Rica, doesn’t know anybody who has been and who thinks all the talk about the surge in violent crime here is way out proportion. In fact, to conclude his thesis, he quotes “GringoTico” (may mean the Costa Rica living guide “From Gringo to Tico”) “You have no reason to fear for your safety in this very non-violent country.”
Well, tell that to the 29-year-old woman from Argentina who was shot in the head and killed at an open-air restaurant in Playa Samara a few days ago, all for her laptop.
Or to the family of Jacques Cloutier, a business associate of my brother from Venice, FL who was shot in the back of the head and killed, along with his 70-year-old Tico business partner, on a finca they owned near Jaco in May. No suspects yet, of course. Already another file on a huge heap of cold cases.
Or to the family of the missing couple from France who disappeared near Jaco earlier this year and have never been located, although their passports turned up in a local dumpster and their rental car was trashed. The police suspect they drowned!
Or to the family members of a young Tico couple living near us in Heredia who were shot and killed in their home in San Isidro on recent Sunday night, leaving the couple’s 5-month-old daughter left without a mom and dad.
All I can say is that Scott Oliver is blessed to yet be touched by crime here. I think our experience is probably more common:
Last Saturday, my wife and I were robbed of a cell phone and two travel bags by thieves who broke into our car at high noon while we were parked for no more than 5 minutes outside the Mega Super in Orotina while we were on our way to a weekend getaway in Jaco. Gracias a Dios, we didn’t bring our laptops or leave a wallet or handbag in the car! And, of course, nobody saw anything, not even the street vendors who daily peddle their wares in front of this high-traffic supermarket.
My 13-year-old stepson was robbed of his cell phone at 2:30 in the afternoon on his way home from school, three blocks away.
Moreover, in this supposedly “safe,” middleclass Tico enclave in which we live, two of the neighbor’s youngsters were robbed of their cell phones at gunpoint! The former owners of the corner mini-super have been robbed so many times, including the last time when the thief put a gun to their infant daughter’s head, that they’ve sold out. Their reasoning? Why wait until the next robbery when the gunman might just pull the trigger.
Crime has gotten so bad here so quickly that just this week our neighborhood association decided it was time our private security guards were armed. Oh, and by the way, the district police station is just four blocks away. What a joke the Fuerza Pública is here. (Did you read in La Nacion the other day about the two Fuerza Pública cops who were arrested in Puntarenas for trying to sell a bunch of digital equipment they stole from the house of a deceased woman from the United States that they were supposed to be guarding?) No wonder so many Ticos have no respect for the law when many of those in uniform are a bunch of thieves themselves.
Here are some real facts about crime in Costa Rica, given at a recent forum on the subject sponsored by the national daily newspaper La Nacion:
In the last four years, the number of homicides per 100,000 residents in Costa Rica has more than doubled from 5.4 in 1994 to 11 in 2011, while the number of prisoners in Costa Rican jails has risen more than 27% in the last two years alone, according to Douglas Durán, coordinator of the criminology master’s program at the State University at a Distance.
“Security in Costa Rica is fractured and divided,” resulting in an uncoordinated web of national security that has been easily exploited by criminals, said Mario Zamora, Costa Rica’s Public Security Minister. “The growth of crime in the 1980s and 90’s revealed the various failures in our national security model,” he said.
Since the various public police forces cannot provide public security, homeowners, shop owners and other businesses now spend an equivalent of half the country’s GDP on private security. A study by the Costa Rica Chamber of Commerce released this month reveals that 42% of those surveyed said they had been a victim of violence.
So for all you starry-eyed dreamers contemplating spending your golden years in this “mostly crime-free tropical paradise,” as welovecostarica.com would have you believe, remember when you move here the famous line from the Wizard of Oz, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” But you may wish you were.
Sorry my opinion “appalls” you, it is my opinion and it is based on my own personal experience which is clearly very different from yours…
I wonder why that is…
But you’re right in that I certainly do feel blessed living in Costa Rica.
Many of the crime facts you quote here have been included on this site in my own articles – I don’t hide the statistics – but I do put them into perspective and as you well know the current homicide rate is still the lowest in Central America and much lower than many US cities.
[ https://www.welovecostarica.com/public/2593.cfm ]
Where exactly do you live?
Scott
20 year old local druggie was chopped to death last friday night in esterillos oeste..
no family, no i.d. no press…
crltdviolent crime in Central America is up 40%. since 2001.
laura chinchilla anticipated the up swing but other than the traffic police she has not been able to influence crime..
very sad…
still i enjoy living here and have decided that i will not longer complain but rather make adjustments.
bobMy wife and I have only been here for 3 1/2 years but have not experienced other than one petty theft when we first moved in.
We live on an acre of land without fences, walls, gates or bars. We know no one personally that has been a victim of any crime, petty or major, other than our lone isolated incident.
We will be installing a fence before the first of the year to keep the dogs from harassing strangers outside of the property.
We have been robbed 3 times and averted the last attempt. We now have 12 dogs in the farm and that seems to keep predators at bay…plus locals know we do have guns.
[b]waggoner[/b] you have posted that you have a large Costa Rican family living with you, plus your dogs, so possibly [b]there is always somebody[/b] on the property.
Our nearest [i]’Gringo'[/i] neighbors, 5 Klms away, 3 dogs were poisoned during a robbery attempt 2 weeks ago, and one died.[quote=”costaricafinca”] [b]waggoner[/b] you have posted that you have a large Costa Rican family living with you, plus your dogs, so possibly [b]there is always somebody[/b] on the property.
Our nearest [i]’Gringo'[/i] neighbors 3 dogs were poisoned during a robbery attempt 2 weeks ago, and one died.[/quote]Much of the time there is someone here but our comings and goings are intentionally irregular as they were in the States for the same reasons.
When we travel away from home we make no display of anything of value with us and our lifestyle does not indicate that we have anything more than the typical Tico family.
When our Tico family visits their relatives in Guanacaste my wife and I have no qualms about going about our business with frequent trips to San Jose.
We depend on the dogs as our warning system and did have one threat to poison the dogs through Marcos. Marcos had a conversation with the gentleman which ended the threat.
I read about violent crimes in Jaco, San Jose and American conclaves in Guanacaste and other regions. Does anyone else see a theme here?
I would not even care to visit the above places simply out of a desire to avoid such a concentration of the piles of expat wealth and the “flies” that it attracts. I don’t come to Costa Rica to sunbathe on a yacht or to zip around on big city streets in an expensive vehicle.
When I am here, I dress and act like most of the locals and I speak as closely to their accent and vocabulary as I can. I do this out of a natural desire to fit in and belong and to NOT stand out. I don’t like flashy displays of wealth by anyone, least of all by me. It is considered bad taste by many people in most places and especially so when the disparity between the wealth being displayed is so much above and beyond the surrounding norm.
Either come here to fit in, or don’t complain when you stand out like a bulls eye and eventually get the karma that behavior attracts.
We are [b]definitely[/b] not in one of the ‘American conclaves in Guanacaste’ and why would we ‘dress and act like most of the locals’?.
We are not flashy and most of the [i]Ticos[/i] have more money than us!
You, [i]señor[/i] are talking nonsense.Have you been a victim of a violent crime there? If so, after the fact, have you wondered what you might have done differently to have avoided becoming a victim?
I am 61 years old and i have never I have never been victimized by violent crime in the Central Valley nor have I ever experienced it in Miami Florida, which I will bet has a much higher rate than anywhere in Costa Rica. That may change tomorrow, but I am pretty confident that my avoidance of violence has more to do with my behavior than with criminals’ behavior. How do you explain the fact that many people go through life without ever seeing violent crime? I don’t believe in luck. There are reasons for everything, whether we know them or not.
We are all relying on our personal experiences here on this matter and they obviously differ. I am questioning why that is.
[quote=”costaricafinca”]We are [b]definitely[/b] not in one of the ‘American conclaves in Guanacaste’ and why would we ‘dress and act like most of the locals’?.
We are not flashy and most of the [i]Ticos[/i] have more money than us!
You, [i]señor[/i] are talking nonsense.[/quote]No one will ever mistake me for a Tico and I can’t agree that trying to become Tico is going to change things.
My life in the States was probably very close to what the life of my Tico neighbors is here putting me much closer to their level than the vast majority of expats.
With great good luck rather than wealth we were able to find our way here. Our neighbors, for the most part, own or are buying their homes as we own ours. At the lowest level I think that they know that what happens to us could happen to any one of them and they tend to be protective of us as well as each other.
My nearest neighbor is a stand-offish fellow but anything happens I know he would be here to help as I would help him.My bet would be that your robberies were done by some local ne’er do well looking for his next high as ours was. Your Tico neighbors know who they are as ours know the most likely person involved in our incident. He knows I know because I stare him down whenever I see him even now three years later.
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