National Police officers detained a truck near the Central Pacific town of Jacó early Wednesday carrying 51 undocumented migrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
After several years of decreasing or stable homicide rates, the number of killings in Costa Rica spiked in 2015, leading law enforcement officials to call for more aggressive prevention, investigation and prosecution of organized crime.
The turtles, which weighed between 120 and 150 kilograms, were sent to the Jaguar Rescue Center in Puerto Viejo for care, where two others have since been taken for care. Police have rescued at least seven of the ancient reptiles so far this year from poachers who capture them for their meat as they come ashore to lay their eggs.
Mario Blanco, director of the Lankester Botanical Garden at the University of Costa Rica, told The Tico Times it was hard to gauge the size of the black market for orchids but that snatching the flowers was a common practice.
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.
Responding to pressure from residents in Costa Rica's Northern Zone, who say they increasingly have become targets for assaults and robberies, the Public Security Ministry announced Thursday that it had conducted the first of several sweeps of the area in an effort to catch the bad guys.
Residents and business owners in Nuevo Arenal, a town in north-central Costa Rica near the Arenal Volcano, are demanding a greater police presence after a spike in crime in recent months.
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.
