A total of 386 checkpoints throughout the country are part of a Traffic Police effort to prevent accidents before and during the holidays. Traffic Police Director Mario Calderón said that operations would begin this week and target the busiest roads in the Central Valley, where traffic jams usually occur while people are out doing holiday shopping.
OIJ official: “Victims are being tortured or mutilated, and most of these crimes occur in the streets. Previously we had information of at least six organized groups operating in Desamparados, but our intelligence now says that these gangs have merged into two major groups that are disputing control of the area.”
According to the Costa Rican Red Cross, August was the most violent month so far this year, with 102 deaths in "tragic circumstances," a term the agency uses in statistics to refer to both homicides and accidents. The report was released on Tuesday.
Public Security Ministry officers on Saturday arrested a Costa Rican man last names Ortega Villegas who was transporting 14 Nicaraguans without immigration documents inside a truck.
RIO DE JANEIRO — The two boys had knives. So Carlos Guzmán handed over his wedding ring, iPhone and wallet. What really galled him was that the police said they knew where one of the boys lived, yet took no action.
Despite having only 9 percent of the world’s population, Latin America and the Caribbean register more than 30 percent of the world’s homicides, according to a security expert at the World Bank.
INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC: Explore homicide statistics and their relationship to economic growth across Latin America.
The central cantons of Limón and San José top the country’s cantonal crime index, according to the latest report released this week by the Peace Vice Ministry – part of Costa Rica's Justice Ministry – and the Institute for Municipal Development. But the data, a summary of which was released on Tuesday and didn't include some serious crimes like rape and kidnapping, is three years old.
