The elephant in the room: safety and crime

Curious about safety and crime in Maldonado and Punta del Este, this week I talked to people on the frontlines of the issue, from cops to security companies and insurance agents. Sometimes anecdotal evidence may cloud the bigger picture, and on the other hand a vague, blanket statement such as “Uruguay is safe” may be the cause of disappointments in the face of frustrated expectations.

So here´s what I found. First of all, Maldonado, the province where Punta del Este and Piriápolis are located, is by all accounts a world apart from the rest of Uruguay. Within Maldonado itself, the coastal towns, villages and neighborhoods are likewise in a different league from other urban enclaves such as Maldonado town, Pan de Azúcar or even erstwhile sleepy San Carlos.

This is because where the poor and working class reside, the infamous pasta base (crack cocaine) has taken hold with a massive epidemic that is still a few years away from subsiding. Thus, the daily robberies of small businesses in towns across Uruguay, often violent, for the few pesos found in petty cash.

The relative security of coastal Maldonado is not an accident. Security here is the hen that lays the golden eggs, and it has to be protected as such. According to the people I talked to, there is an express message from the government to the cops, and down to the crooks here –they all know each other apparently— which is: “No violent crime here guys, or else”.

On the other hand, burglaries are a fact of life in our area, but the good news is that they are on the decline. This according not only to cops but to private security company owner and one of the leading insurers in town, who two years ago gave me a completely opposite impression.

On the recent turnaround of the areas of El Golf and San Rafael, which for years suffered a disproportionate number of break-ins, the consensus is that a neighborhood watch effort with professional help from a former police chief produced the intended results.

Police I talked to stressed the need to be vigilant, to communicate among neighbors and to call either the local station or the 911 line to report suspicious characters or activity. Please call, they said. Uruguayans are not naturally given to community efforts, but any initiative involving security is sure to find positive reception.

About the forms of burglary, modus operandi varies between summer and off-season crimes. In the summer apparently professional bands of robbers come from Argentina and elsewhere looking for cash, jewelry and art. Summer break-ins also happen during gatherings at homes where people retire to the back yard, and often leave the front of the house unattended, doors unlocked or windows open. Opportunistic theft also involves breaking the window of a car where a bag or a jacket are left in plain sight on the car seat.

Another classic tale of burglary involves cleaning out a house on the same evening of people’s arrival. You are seen unloading a car with various bags, and later are seen leaving to have dinner out or to go shopping for groceries, only to come back home and find the cash, the laptop and the digital cameras gone. In winter, the M.O. is to go in looking for laptops and flat-screen TVs, the only two items of any resale value.

The common sense tip is to hide your laptop and valuables when you leave. Usually the burglars are in the house for just a couple of minutes and they do a frenzied, general sweep that may look like the aftermath of a tsunami to the returning owner. Another piece of advice is to abstain from throwing out boxes of new electronic equipment in front of your house. Rather, flatten down the boxes and take them to a dumpster.

On the issue of dogs, where the folklore says that a dog in a yard may be subject to poisoning by a burglar, everyone I consulted scoffed at the idea. Burglars have tricks to leave a dog locked inside a room of a house if the dog is left inside, and there were no known instances of dog poisoning in burglaries that anyone could recall for me. There are however instances of dog kidnapping for ransom, so don´t let your dog roam the neighborhood alone, especially if it is a pure breed, and more especially if it’s a Golden Retriever, and don´t leave your yard gate unlocked. Have a fence surrounding your property.

Lastly, there´s the importance of having an alarm system with a security company to respond to a break-in, if possible with outdoor alarm sensors, to further cut down their action time. Some of the companies working in Punta del Este have extremely fast response times (3 to 5 minutes with Maxima, the others should be checked out) and this reduces the damage that can be suffered in an eventual burglary and can lead to the arrest of the crooks.

In the case of burglaries with the owners inside, the alleged use of a “sleep gas” was downplayed as a myth. What happens is that burglars go in when we are in our deepest sleep, and for vacationers or weekenders they may even be helped by our own alcohol drinking beforehand, making it unlikely that we will hear a sound. Another good reason to have either the dog or the alarm system or both in place.