A steadily climbing homicide rate has left Costa Rican authorities struggling to find a strategy to combat increasingly violent and well-organized criminal elements, both international and local.
A recent survey of National Police officers by the Center for Research and Promotion of Human Rights in Central America found that 25 percent believed that LGBT people had fewer rights under the law than heterosexuals.
More than half the arrests involved domestic violence, despite a government campaign to curb a recent spike in domestic abuse complaints during the World Cup.
Police caught the Gringo with the last name Kelarakus minutes after he allegedly broke a car window and stole a laptop computer and other items at the popular tourist beach on Tuesday.
The shift in leadership also followed a controversial decision Wednesday absolving several guards of the death of inmate Johel Araya in 2011 at the same prison.
Costa Rica's battle with international drug traffickers continued this weekend with the Saturday seizure of 1.7 tons of cocaine during two early-morning raids near both the Pacific and Caribbean coasts.
Alexander Leudo Nieves, a Colombian man who the U.S. government accuses of having links to an international drug trafficking cartel, could be released this month from a minimum-security prison in Costa Rica, where he is serving a seven-year sentence on drug-related charges.
