Subscribe via E-Mail

Get all of our news delivered fresh to your inbox every morning! Just tell us your name and where to send it using the form below.

PS – We hate spam too. We don’t sell or share our list with anyone, and we never send commercial email.




luxe
Friday, January 29th, 2016  |  USD: Buy 531.29 / Sell 543.92
20 years

Half of assaults involve a firearm and occur in San José

Email this page

man with gun in wasteband

September 2nd, 2013 (InsideCostaRica.com) So far this year, half of all robberies involved a firearm and occurred in San José, according to numbers released by the Judicial Investigation Organization (OIJ).

 

Between January 1st and August 27th, the OIJ received 4,105 reports of assaults, of which 78.5% occurred against pedestrians – half of which were on the city streets of San José. In half of all reports, the suspect used a firearm to demand the victims’ valuables.

 

On average, assailants attack 13 people every day in San José, representing a 20% increase compared to the same period last year.

 

Some 17% of assaults occur on Fridays between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m.

 

Assailants are particularly fond of robbing victims of cellular phones, accounting for 24% of items taken during assaults.

costa rica news

ATTENTION: If you are seeing this message,


Advertisement


Get our news delivered fresh to your inbox every morning.

Click here to subscribe to our email list. We hate spam too and never send commercial email.

Like us on Facebook and receive our news in your timeline

  • stevieboy

    rico- aside from participating is yellow journalism :) dont you think adding the word “LEGAL” OR “ILLEGAL” to your article would give a better distinction??? for example..

    Half of assaults involve a “ILLEGAL”firearm and occur in San José
    this slight addition.. makes all the difference in the world.. if that information is not known.. then it should be stated.. because then we can actually find solutions instead of attacking things ona topical level which is so common in the states.

    I would go out on a limb.. and call me crazy.. to say most of these were committed with illegal firearms.. thus protecting the rights of legal citizens that want to protect themselves and family. I go out of my way to comply with all the laws here. and when i read this it steams me..

    • http://insidecostarica.com/ Timothy Williams

      Stevieboy, Rico is no longer with ICR (I’m the new editor), but I’ll respond to your question – I do believe it would be appropriate to add ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’ to the story if the OIJ report would have provided such information, which it did not.

      I wouldn’t call it yellow though, the story simply states a fact (that fact, perhaps, could even ENCOURAGE legal gun ownership by law abiding citizens).

      Of course, almost certainly most of the firearms used were illegal and/or stolen.

      I don’t see anything about the story though that is intended to discourage legal gun ownership. Perhaps the opposite.

      Personally, I’m all for legal gun ownership by law-abiding citizens.

      • Jim Freeman

        Good responce Timothy!

  • Ken Morris

    It must be statistics day! For starters, since half the population lives in the Central Valley and most pass through San José (of course, San José might have been defined as the metro area rather than the city) to find half the robberies occurring in San José only means that there are about an equal amount of robberies everywhere. Second, somewhere in the neighborhood of three-quarters of everyone in Costa Rica don’t drive, so finding that 78.5% of the robbery victims are pedestrians also only tells us that the odds are proportional. Third, robbery is by definition a crime that includes the threat or use of force, and there aren’t a lot of weapons to choose among. Some thugs probably use machetes, but if you intend to rob people, I recommend getting a gun. Fourth, I would imagine that those robbed by bandits with guns are more apt to report the altercation than those robbed by thugs with a pocket knife, so I’m not even sure I believe the report. Last, there are more cops on the street, which makes crimes easier to report, so for all we know the actually street crime rate is the same or lower, but only the reported crime rate is up. In the end, I’m not sure that these data tell us anything (except to keep your cell phone in your pocket).

    • http://insidecostarica.com/ Timothy Williams

      Ken, I think another factor involved is that INS started offering insurance for smartphones – police report required. In fact, we heard from someone at OIJ that they are concerned that they are receiving false reports of robberies when someone simply loses their phone.

Popular Content