Mazatlan Police Murders

Mazatlan Police Murders [2010 thread revisited]]

I'm going to Mazatlan soon and while doing some research came across two articles about the police chief being murdered in January and now two police officers. Also a tourist from Calgary was attacked in his RV. This occurred on the main street in the Golden Zone. Although I was fully aware of the drug wars happening in Mexico, I have always felt safe traveling there. Now I'm beginning to think twice about this. Has anyone been to Mazatlan recently? Is the war on drugs heating up so that it's moving into the tourist zone? Has the military presence increased? Flights and timeshare are booked, so it would be costly to cancel now.

I did a news search and couldn't find any news stories to back up the information you had that a Mazatlan Police Chief and two police officers had been murdered.

I don't know anything about a tourist being killed in/near an RV Park or on "the Main Street." There have been tourists who have "wandered" into local areas where they shouldn't have, and been killed. Not many, but it has happened. This also happens in most major cities...

I've been to Mazatlan many times and always felt safe.

Fern

Fern, maybe the question could be asked on mazinfo yahoo group? I spotted a news headline crawling on the bottom of CNN news, about a family of 4 tourists in a van in Mexico that was killed. But it was just a headline, very brief, didn't say what city or state in Mexico...and I have found no more info. I saw that CG crawl across the bottom of my screen yesterday. So maybe that's why the original poster asked the question about safety? I haven't been to Mazatlan in a few years...and I miss it very much. But I don't keep on top of news from down there like I used to. That's why I'm suggesting mazinfo yahoo group...locals post and will know the latest news not to mention myths, urban legends and gossip.

There was a lot of talk yesterday

on the MAZ board, there were 2 police officers killed by several groups of assailants, in 3 vehicles.

They were killed in the Golden Zone around 8 pm.


Here is a link to one of the posts,

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MazInfo/message/83692

While this is a terrible tragedy, Maz and most of Mexico are still safer than most major inner cities here in the US.

fwiw,

Greg

I couldn't find anything about any police killings in the last day or two at either Excelsior or Cronica de Hoy. This is the type of story that they would almost certainly include in their national news section. Nothing showed up in Google.

I did find this story in Excelsior about the killing of two policeman in Chilpancingo, but Chilpancingo is in the south, a lonnngggg way from Maz. The story says that two police offices were assassinated and their bodies were found in the interior of a compact auto close to the downtown area.

*****

I found a couple of references. Apparently the report combines two separate incidents.

In the first, on Jan 29, the state police chief was assassinated while inside his vehicle in front of the hotel San Diego on the Golden Zone.

In the second, which occurred yesterday, two officers on patrol were killed.

******

FWIW - these assassinations are often not done as retaliation for drug enforcement activities. Rather these are takedowns of police officers who are part of - or are controlled by - a rival gang.

I went to Noreste and found several articles. I translated them, because my Spanish is not that good. There were two officers killed in the Golden Zone, and four others, one a Deputy Chief of Rural Operations, and that was in a rural area. All in one week. The total for a year is about 16, I think it said, which for Mexico is not alot. Its all about drugs.

Fern

The tourist from Calgary was attacked in is motor home in the mobile home park. There was a knock on the door and when he saw the person was wearing some sort of badge he opened the door thinking it was the security guard. Not many more details available except that he and his wife had been travelling with their motor home to Mazatlan for about 20 yrs. He is out of the hospital and doing fine. The city picked up the cost for all his medical expenses plus his flight home. He is saying he won't be returning anytime soon but this looks like a random thing that could happen anywhere.

Lynn

dreamin said:

I'm going to Mazatlan soon and while doing some research came across two articles about the police chief being murdered in January and now two police officers. Also a tourist from Calgary was attacked in his RV. This occurred on the main street in the Golden Zone. Although I was fully aware of the drug wars happening in Mexico, I have always felt safe traveling there. Now I'm beginning to think twice about this. Has anyone been to Mazatlan recently? Is the war on drugs heating up so that it's moving into the tourist zone? Has the military presence increased? Flights and timeshare are booked, so it would be costly to cancel now.

Click to expand...

2 police officers killed with machine guns - 50 or so rounds fired into them and then to ensure they would NOT live they threw a gernade into their car. ALL of this in front of my elder parents who were watching this from their balcony 3 stories up - they heard and saw everything. My parents have been going to Mazatlan for 15 years and have said this year has been the worst, they will not go back after seeing this. In total this week alone 10 police officers killed. I have my parents and 2 sisters and husbands there right now and am very concerned for them. They are staying very close to their temporary homes and do not feel safe going for a beach walk, so having said this they are currently living in a war zone and are counting the days before they leave - NOT GOOD. If I were you I would cancel and thank my lucky stars that it only cost me a few dollars and not my life.

Here are two links to confirm that these incidents are happening:

http://www.globaltvcalgary.com/Maza...medical+bills+flights+home/2666839/story.html

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2010/01/police-executed-in-mazatlan.html

The latest killing I read about in the Yahoo group for Mazatlan, which I joined through the link here on TUG. These are messages from tourists who witnessed the massacre. It is frightening to read.

I've traveled to Cozumel, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Ixtapa, Acapulco and Mazatlan over the last 4 years. I am aware of the drug problems in these cities but have always felt that this was between the drug lords, the police and the government. It never seemed to impact tourists. These Mazatlan incidents seem to have no regard for tourists or innocent bystanders. I know all cities have crime. This just seems different.

Fern Modena said:

I did a news search and couldn't find any news stories to back up the information you had that a Mazatlan Police Chief and two police officers had been murdered.

I don't know anything about a tourist being killed in/near an RV Park or on "the Main Street." There have been tourists who have "wandered" into local areas where they shouldn't have, and been killed. Not many, but it has happened. This also happens in most major cities...

I've been to Mazatlan many times and always felt safe.

Fern

Click to expand...

Here is a link to a newspaper article about the Canadian tourist attacked in Mazatlan. He was attacked at his RV in an RV park in the middle of the tourist zone.

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/march072010/calgary-mexico-dj.php

You may feel safe but these things do occur and are becoming more frequent. Mazatlan is the least safe of any of the tourist destinations in Mexico. We have several relatives that live in Mazatlan but are considering moving due to the violence.

aliikai2 said:

.While this is a terrible tragedy, Maz and most of Mexico are still safer than most major inner cities here in the US.

fwiw,

Greg

Click to expand...

I don't know too many tourists that spend their vacations in the inner cities in the US. In fact I don't know any people that go there. Crime is a much more serious problem for the average person in Mexico than it is in the US.

I read an article this morning about the increasing number of Mexican middle class entrepreneurs moving with their families to the US to escape the crime and violence in Mexico. They can easily obtain a US Visa by investing $250,000 in a business in the US.

My wife is Mexican and most of her family lives in Mexico. A few have been able to move here to escape the crime and violence. Several of her relatives have been crime victims.

The RV Park is *not* in the middle of the tourist zone. I checked its location. While it is on the "main street," it is 9 KM North of the Bridge to Marina Mazatlán. That would be a ways from the normal tourist zone, which is on the near side of the Marina.

Fern

John Cummings said:

Here is a link to a newspaper article about the Canadian tourist attacked in Mazatlan. He was attacked at his RV in an RV park in the middle of the tourist zone.

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/march072010/calgary-mexico-dj.php

Click to expand...

Fern Modena said:

The RV Park is *not* in the middle of the tourist zone. I checked its location. While it is on the "main street," it is 9 KM North of the Bridge to Marina Mazatlán. That would be a ways from the normal tourist zone, which is on the near side of the Marina.

Fern

Click to expand...

I am not sure but I think just the fact that it is an RV park that people from Mexico and outside of Mexico stay at kind of makes it, perhaps not the "normal" tourist zone but still a place tourists would think they would be reasonably safe.

I don't disagree with what you are saying. However it was posted that the RV Park was "On the main street in the Golden Zone." That simply is not true, and that is what my post said. Information on the web about the RV Park says that there is a bus nearby which will transport people to the Golden Zone. I game specific information on where the place was, but if you haven't been to Mazatlan, perhaps you wouldn't realize where it was.

Fern

AlbertaTravel said:

I am not sure but I think just the fact that it is an RV park that people from Mexico and outside of Mexico stay at kind of makes it, perhaps not the "normal" tourist zone but still a place tourists would think they would be reasonably safe.

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Mazatlan Murders

We returned from Mazatlan on Wednesday night. I am very sad to report that the violence in Mazatlan has indeed reached the Golden Zone. The stories posted about the Calgary RV visitor are true and can be confirmed by stories in the Calgary press.

Monday night my wife and I had dinner and walked up from the Balboa Towers area towards Pueblo Bonito, where we were staying. It was 7:30 pm. Sirens and ambulances were racing by us. We came upon the horror of two police officers gunned down in their car in front of the Hotel Caravelle. It was awful. AK-47s had been used and a grenade. The dead officers were still in their car. A huge crowd gathered.

Twelve hours later, in another part of town, two more municipal police were assassinated. That makes six in the past eight days.

Mazatlan's lovely people are suffering.

Mazatlan is still paradise

I go to Mazatlan several times a year and just got back a couple of weeks ago. Just when I returned home to Indianapolis, there were some folks killed in our small town. These were not police of drug dealers just normal folks. In Mazatlan, I can't recall a tourist being killed in my 12 years of visiting. There is an intense campaign by the Mexican government throughout the country to stop the drug traffic and the drug dealers are trying to intimidate the police by these brutal killings. There have also been several drug dealers killed or captured.

The RV park incident is out in an isolated area (like Fern indicated) and was more of a robbery attempt not murder.

I feel very safe in Mazatlan, but use common sense like I would in any large city-don't walk down dark streets alone at night, don't flash wads of money or wear expensive jewelry in poor neighborhoods. I ride the buses and take my children (8 & 11) and would certainly not jeopardize their safety if I felt that it was not as safe as in the USA. We drive down from Indiana about 37 hours non-stop (driving day & night) on good toll roads and enjoy all the benefits that Mazatlan has to offer. We don't consider ourselves high risk takers but neither are we willing to isolate ourselves because of fear from all the bad things that happen in the world today as well as all the accidental injuries and deaths.

I don't consider rural Indiana dangerous, but in our rural area we have had attempted child abduction, rape, killings and robberies in the past 6 months and I don't feel unsafe but just observant of my surroundings. Mexico is a beautiful country and the vast majority are really nice people. It's too bad that the drug war is going on but the uSA has put a lot of pressure on Mexico to stop the flow of drugs and the drug dealers aren't happy.

Everyone has their own level of safety and based on your own personal limits of comfort many will choose a more conservative approach than me but just wanted to give you my experiences rather than just newspaper headlines and let you make up your own mind.

The RV park attack has been linked by some to drug and/or sex trade and is not believed by all to be a random event. Of course, some would protest this.

That said, the attacks on police in the street, one in the Golden Zone and the other in broad daylight on Hwy 15 toward the electricity plant south of town are very disturbing.

I think the attacks on police/authorities in general in Mexico by the cartels are what is most disturbing to Americans. Our country has not experienced anything remotely approaching this level of violence toward authority since the days of the "wild wild West" and, to a lesser extent, the 1930's. There is no question that it is dangerous to be in law enforcement or to take any government position and oppose the cartels in Mexico. Many brave Mexicans have given their lives to try and break the cartels. Whether they can succeed or not, who knows? As long as American money buys the drugs, there will always be people willing to battle law enforcement to try to get a share of those American dollars, and in the U.S., we have certainly not eliminated the drug trade, though we have driven it--more or less--into the shadows.

Granting all that, we find Mexico safe for tourists (and we live 30 miles south of the San Diego/Tijuana border. Those who do not go where they should not and do not attempt to buy drugs are not targeted. There have been a few, very few, instances of innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time, but as the poster mentioned about Indiana, innocents are victims in the U.S. too. Examples of violence in Mexico have been played, replayed, and replayed in the U.S. to the point that it seems as though tourists are being gunned down on main streets, and that is not the case. We have seen American media report incidents of "3 Americans" or "American teens" killed/kidnapped, etc. in Mexico; however, the media never comes back to report "The three Americans killed in Mexico have long criminal histories in the U.S., and were involved with the cartels in Mexico," or "The American teens were smuggling drugs across the border for the cartels." It would help if the whole story were reported, rather than simply sensationalizing the initial violence. The violence is real, but we would not go to our 2nd home in Mexico if we felt unsafe: we're still spending more than half of each year there--and we're close to Tijuana and the border.

Americans tourists typically do not speak Spanish; American tourists are not used to seeing a military presence on the streets (though those who have been to Israel--where the crime rate is lower than the crime rate in Seattle--have seen them); American tourists are certainly not accustomed to law enforcement being a target. All these things combine, I think, to make the violence, which is real, in Mexico seem more horrific than it actually is. At the heighth of the drug war in Tijuana a year or year and a half ago, the murder rate in Tijuana was lower than the murder rate in New Orleans; it was not far above the murder rate in Washington, D.C. Yet because these cities are in the U.S. and we are within our comfort zone, we accept that violence.

I believe Mexico is still a safe place to be a tourist, but as the poster from Indiana said, you must take precautions at a conscious level--perhaps the same precautions you take at an unconscious level in the U.S.

I fellow who was injured in the RV attack arrived home yesterday and his picture was in the morning paper. The Mexican authorities not only paid for he and his wife's flight home but also paid the flight for his brother-in-law and sister-in-law to fly down and drive the motor home back. Doesn't look like the type that would be involved in anything like that to me.

Lynn

All I'm saying is to keep these things in perspective. There is no city in the U.S. where killings don't occur. The situation in Mexico is troubling, but the fact is it isn't affecting most people's daily lives. This is a link to a t.v. program today in San Diego that helps with the issues I think.

Here is a news story from Fox this morning about the border issues.
http://www.fox5sandiego.com/videobeta/e9cb9bad-0f1d-4341-86f0-a9ac935778b3/News/Mexico-Warning

Update - Returned Safely from Mazatlan

We proceeded with our vacation to Mazatlan and just returned two days ago. We were more cautious than normal on this trip. We had planned to take a tour into the countryside but decided to stay in the city. We returned to our hotel after dinner and didn't stay out as late as usual. We did long walks on the beach during the day, ventured by bus to the Plaza Machado downtown, and walked to Mega. We felt safe. There definitely was an increased police presence, especially because it was Spring Break and Semana Santa. By Thursday the Golden Zone and beaches were extremely crowded with mostly young people. We saw Tourist Police on bikes, Municipal Police, State Police and Federales (open trucks with about 6 soldiers in each, armed with machine guns). One evening we were at a street-side restaurant called Gus y Gus. An ambulance drove by with it's siren on. Our waiter, standing nearby, ducked down when he heard the siren. So it was obvious that some of the locals are nervous and on edge. The next day I saw a copy of the local newspaper and there was a photo of a young woman in a white SUV that had been gunned down. It was a stark reminder that there was an element of danger on this holiday and it wasn't a typical care-free beach holiday. That is so unfortunate because we really liked Mazatlan and the friendliness of its people. Their businesses are suffering as we saw many empty restaurants and shops. Personally, I won't return until this drug madness has settled down. I will be doing my first TUG review of the Costa de Oro where we stayed and will emphasize all the positive and wonderful things Mazatlan has to offer.

balboa said:

We returned from Mazatlan on Wednesday night. I am very sad to report that the violence in Mazatlan has indeed reached the Golden Zone. The stories posted about the Calgary RV visitor are true and can be confirmed by stories in the Calgary press.

Monday night my wife and I had dinner and walked up from the Balboa Towers area towards Pueblo Bonito, where we were staying. It was 7:30 pm. Sirens and ambulances were racing by us. We came upon the horror of two police officers gunned down in their car in front of the Hotel Caravelle. It was awful. AK-47s had been used and a grenade. The dead officers were still in their car. A huge crowd gathered.

Click to expand...

We were at El Cid Marina in March at the same time this incident happened. The next night we visited with a fellow who was there when it happened. They were in the tent where the Artisans had their things on display and were selling. He said when they heard the gun fire he and many others hit the ground as to protect themselves. He said it was a scary situation and that 3 policemen were killed and that AK-47's were used.

We still felt safe in Mazatlan and did not hesitate to walk down the street the next week in the early evening. As several others have said these things happen in many places in the US also. We will go back to MX. as we have for several years. I think one just has to use comman sense in where you go as one would anywhere.

Link to article about safety in Mexico:


aoppenheimer@MiamiHerald.com <http://mx.mc572.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to= aoppenheimer@MiamiHerald.com>

The RV park I believe is the one on the road from the marina area North to PBEB and the new RIU, on the right about across from Torres. We're heading to Maz in the Fall and this thread makes me a little nervous. What a shame it would be if the reputation of the area becomes such that many folks no longer visit this wonderfaul spot

Moderators, please delete. I didn't realize this was an old post. Thanks