The story mainly consists of an interview with local PRI deputy representative (opposite party of the State's Government), René Mendívil, where he accuses Vega and his administration for not coordinating with Congress with regards to crime prevention and public safety. Primarily, he accuses the Governor of not having created a Public Safety Program for the State yet.
However, there aren't any figures nor comparisons to last year's crime rates, and the story even admits that the matter of public safety is of great responsibility to all of the cities. So, aside from giving deputy Mendívil a chance to criticize the State's Government, what else are they really saying in their piece?
Usually we wouldn't want to bud in local media issues, they have their reasons (some sources say that this reasons are millions and millions pesos of publicity) when they decided to publish stories regarding crime, but they always quote a number or two.
But what else can we do when it Tijuana's Bussiness Coordinating Council (CCE in Spanish), which is led by Manuel Hernández Niebla (a man who doesn't shy away in order to criticize politicians who deserve it) comes out and defends the State Government through this message:
"The Governor is politically in charge of the State, therefore, it is his responsibility to coordinate efforts, but each city is responsible for its execution. We need all your disposition and talent combined with all the necessary public resources to take on this challenge," mentioned CCE.
They also mentioned that the State has without a doubt, made some progress regarding the matter of safety, "transforming into a nation wide reference when it comes to a better practice of this matter. Even though, were aren't satisfied, today, the citizens of Baja live a very different situation regarding the safety in which we lived in a decade ago."
"We have always recognized success and pointed out errors. Our criticism has always been in a constructive manner, with proposals and with a spirit of working together."
And if there was any doubt about what were Mendívil and El Frontera's comments regarding the matter, he finished of saying, "we acknowledged the State Governor as Baja California's leader, not just in a matter of safety, but in all other aspects related to economical development and the well being of our community, which is why we extend our hand in order to work with him and his team."
So now, we have been able to see what the suspicions towards these type of criticism against the State Government are really about, what about the missing numbers?
Obviously we aren't positioned where we liked to regarding crime prevention in the state, such as common offense crimes like homicides, but lets not put aside the reality on which we have improved a lot in comparison to the worst years of the violence crisis the five cities went through.
Diego Ovalle, a Mexican-American statesman who has an excellent blog about crime in Mexico, put together all the statistics regarding the matter in the country, from different sources where we can clearly see that in fact, there has been a progress, fluctuating from year to year:
He quickly explains the table: In the matter of homicides, of any type, during 2013 Baja California is set way below states such s Michoacán , Chihuahua and Tamaulipas
Regarding first-degree murders, we need to point out that does Baja takes on second place with 714 registries, while first place is is occupied by Coahuila with 1087 and third is occupied by Chihuahua with 673. Journals Frontera and La Cronica, summed up both culpable and first-degree murders, to increase the number of violent deaths that were registered in Baja California, according to their figures.
Furthermore, the State Government already has the most recent registries regarding crime prevention of 2014:
We can see that during the first year of Vega's administration, there was considerable improvement in several common offense crimes, such as breaking an entering and car theft, decreasing to a 7% and 12% respectively. Yes, these numbers are higher that the ones in Chihuahua (by the way, Baja California has more cars than Chihuahua), they are lower in comparison with the ones of 2013. There isn't much you can criticize the State Government in that sense then, even though car theft is also a city responsibility.
The Government statistics due show an general 3% decrease in all categories, going from 104,029 crimes during 2013 to 107,284 in 2014. A 44% of those crimes were in Tijuana, while 35% were in Mexicali and the rest in the three remaining cities.
State Government points out that crime prevention "has had a 6.97% investment ranking in 3rd place on the Investment Scale, while in Procurement and Public Safety during 2013 there was a 2.1 million of pesos investment and a 2.18 in 2014, which is equal to a 20,532 pesos increase.
Which leads us back to the same thing, all government levels are responsible for crimes in the country, going from local to federal police corps.
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