Thank you gringalais, can you please let us know after the meeting, why the guards did not stop this?
1 Like
Dos emprendedores de Punta Arenas se pusieron en contacto con T13 para mostrarles que *en EstaciĆ³n Central, hay un grupo de al menos 30 personas que noche tras noche salen a amedrentar y robar las pertenencias de las personas.
ā¦āLos robos con violencia se han incrementado 100% comparado con el mismo periodo el aƱo anteriorāā¦
And a new case today:
Well, we had the meeting recently. It turns out it was an encerrona-type carjacking somewhat up the street leading to the entrance. It didnāt happen at the gate itself. Carabineros came quickly (we have a ton of police stations here), but couldnāt do much.
There are a few cameras near the entrance, but none got a good view of what happened due to the angle and the lack of streetlights. Thee administration is repairing and upgrading cameras, so they are going to see about putting in new and better cameras that can record that part of the street. The administrator also said sheās going to contact the municipality about installing streetlights.
Just the other day there was a report of some weird characters being seen out along the road behind the back wall. Thereās a dirt road that leads to a farm and then a small agricultural business behind that. The people who work the farm are supposed to close the gate to the road, but more and more I see it left open. One of the guards came to my and neighboring houses to ask if we had seen anything. The other guard also called to check on me. I was alone at the time. I didnāt understand the full story from the guard. Itās not my Spanish, which is fluent. My dogs were barking, so it was hard to hear him. I got the gist of it, though. I hadnāt noticed anything, but I was working in my home office at the front of the house.
Thanks. It sucks. With all that is going on, my husband is balking on taking a vacation because heās worried about leaving the house empty. We had arranged for some time off next month. Itās just really frustrating me. I need the break and a change of scenery, but if heās going to be nervous all the time, itās just going to make me miserable. He wants to reevaluate in July.
But, how nice to see Boric and his administration enjoying their vacations. Iāve really come to despise them.
Cameras are only effective if someone is actually monitoring them, as relying on movement sensors generate a lot of false alarms on busy streets. Also suggest installing external lighting at ingress points, rather than waiting on the muni. Decent low-light cameras donāt need a lot of illumination.
Security has monitors in their booth. How much they watch them, Iām not sure since theyāre also dealing with many other things.
I havenāt really paid attention to the lighting at the gate. There are some lights, but we should check out how much they illuminate. As late as it stays light these days, weāre not out after dark much. Where there is no lighting is the road leading up to the entrance, where the encerrona occurred. So, itās likely only the municipality would be able to install lighting there.
The bad guys are increasingly seeing that the lights and cameras are not much of an impediment unless there is an immediate link to something convincingly ballistic. Which of course the good guys canāt have.
Until citizens are allowed some meaningful form of self-defense, this is only going to get worse. The Chilean culture isnāt going to improve, and it is being made worse by the waves of foreign criminals. Even the Argentines are now seeing Chile as a high-crime country, which until recently would have seemed like the pot calling the kettle black.
Denuncian robo en oficinas de la SubsecretarĆa de PrevenciĆ³n del Delito
I guess they should go to the totƩm de denuncias to report this.
How are you feeling about taking your vacation in July? Has anything changed? Would a very loud alarm system deter? It would wake the neighborsā¦
July isnāt happening. My husband is now talking about taking a Friday off in August when thereās a holiday on Thursday (the 15th) to do a quick trip. I freelance, so I can arrange to finish up my work early and take those days. I think heād be better doing a shorter trip first.
I think part of his problem is that heās a lawyer, so he tends to ruminate about worst case scenarios - such as people moving into the house when weāre away and the hell weād have to go through to get our property back. He sees cases like that regularly.
A few neighbors have alarms. Iām not sure how effective they are. A friend is selling alarms because her husband completely bailed on her and their son. she offered sell us one recently.
He is wise to consider his experience and realise it could happen there. Many have a failure to imagine what may happen and pay dearly. Of course at the same time when your family feels unable to leave your home it is essentially imprisoment. I have been in a similar situation where you cant just trust that things will be okay for a getaway and there doesnt seem to be a solution or end in sight. We had to bite the bullet and move eventually : (
I think heād be kind of wary no matter where we are living. In fact, where we are now is much more tranquil since weāre no longer in Santiago and thereās controlled access. The problem is more behind the house. Thereās a road that leads to a farm behind the back wall. The people that work the farm used to keep the access gated, but they no longer do that. I see random people walking around there a lot. The people that burglarized the neighborās house appeared to have gone over the back wall.
When we lived in La Reina, we were in a pasaje off a main avenue. Nearly all of the other pasajes had controlled access. We had a gate, but if you locked it, the next person would just leave it open. A handy neighbor even soldered a chain with a padlock to the gate and gave everyone keys. People still left it open. Interestingly, he and his wife moved out about the same time we did. They were as sick as we were of living there! The gate issues were only the tip of the iceberg.
Since ours was the only pasaje that was open, weād get all sort of weirdos wandering in. Most were more annoying than dangerous - Jehovahās Witnesses, people selling stuff, etcā¦ However, I had a really unsettling experience once where this guy wanted me to let him into the house. He said he was an inspector from the Seremi de Salud. Of course, I didnāt fall for it. The neighbors at the end of the pasaje once had their whole house cleaned out in the middle of the day. the burglars much have brought a moving truck! Even that didnāt encourage people to lock the gate.
Fingers crossed that we will be able to get away in August. I really need it!
I am surprised there is not an enterprising insurance company who offers a premium for invasion by squatters. Or better still, a house-sitting service so people can go on stress-free vacations while the house-sitter lives in their home. If I were younger, I would start a house-sitting service.
How the Chilean public can remain complacent mystifies me. I always saw Chileans as pro-active, maybe I romanticized the way they all worked together when the mine collapsed, or when the tsunami hit.
But in this situation of squatterās rights, perhaps it is a class distinction. If only the middle class can afford the luxury of having squatters because the poor cannot afford vacations, there probably isnāt enough critical mass in the middle-class to initiate a change in the legal system to protect against opportunistic squatters.
Unfortunately if you hire a housesitter, you have to be sure they are trustworthy.
That was one good thing when we lived in Santiago. We had a neighbor two doors down that would housesit/petsit for us, for pay of course. She actually came out here once to house to watch the pets too. Iām not sure if sheād have time now. Sheās a teacher and her school isnāt following a regular time off schedule these days. Plus, her husband has a small business and she often helps him when she is off.
He actually does dog walking and pet sitting. He doesnāt housesit, he checks in on the pets several times a day. He wouldnāt be able to come all the way out here since his clients are all in Providencia, La Reina and Las Condes.
The problem with squatter situations, is that if you donāt get them out in the first 24 hours with Carabineros, the judicial process to get them out is lengthy and your house is often trashed by the time you get it back. Insurers canāt hurry up the court system.
Have squatters always had more rights than the homeowner or is this a recent legislation? Or has squatting evolved into an everyday thing? How does the squatter benefitā¦ they just have to move again in a few weeks, months and they accumulate all that bad, heavy karma. Also, if you are members of a co-op or similar homeownerās group, why not pay the guard a little extra to check your home during their shift?
Iām not sure about the legal history of those laws here.
We do have a HOA and security here, but there have still been issues.
The good news, though is that I just received an email from the administrator that they have closed off the access to that road behind our houses and installed new cameras back there. Iām going to have to take a walk there in a bit to see what it looks like.
It sounds like the owners of the property agreed to doing that. I guess they donāt want random people wandering around either.
If the bad guys have more rights than you, it sounds like the bad guys are running the countryā¦
glad the owner made a positive move
1 Like
Strange no international MSM outlet has summed it up so truthfully and well.
Itās hard to think otherwise when they have pardoned and given lifetime pensions to those that blew up the country in 2019.