It is heartbreaking to hear about the escalating state of insecurity and crime.
We are in the south and its the high high season now and we have not noticed that businessese are closing earlier or anything like that which is happening elswhere. Even with all the crowds which historically have brought the criminal opportunists for stealing stuff out of cars, etc they dont particularly seem to be here this year or somehow we just arent in the wrong places at the wrong times.
The cities are where this will fester, but without a solution it WILL spread out to even the more remote areas. It will not stay contained as long as the root causes are allowed to stay rooted in the ground and feeding the poisonous trees
I agree that 2 more years of this escalation is a deal breaker. It is just not viable. What is one to do with small children. One of the reasons we came here was for the safety in face of the western countries downward spiral. At this point it has almost become a case of pick your poison
Sad to hear more have left, but I can understand why. What real future is there here for the next 1 or 2 generations? It looks pretty bleak.
According to this report, the homicide and attempted homicide rate has almost doubled in six years, with no sign of a letup.
Suspect that the true rate is considerably higher.
Yeah, that article states that the police have a high approval rating these days, but that wasnât the case not too long ago, when members of the present government and sections of the media led attacks on all public institutions with the aim of generating instability as a precursor to their commie takeover.
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I said this in January 2023 (as well as titling this thread 'crime increase hopefully over?) and I was expecting crime in 2023 to be the same or slightly lower than 2022.
Just checking the stats however, and it looks like I was being a bit optimistic.
If we look here FiscalĂa de Chile | EstadĂsticas you can compare 2022 (Jan to Dec) to 2023 (Jan to Dec). The text is small, so view on a TV or on a monitor, not on a phone.
I believe these are official statistics which is as close to the reality as you can probably get
For 2022, we see âdelitos ingresadosâ of 1.425.712 and for 2023 we see 1.552.289 which is 9% higher.
Thatâs on page 4 which is the first real page of data after the header page and table of contents
For homicidios I see 3.032 for 2022 and 3.248 for 2023 which is 7% higher (page 7)
Robos has increased from 99.848 to 111.343
Robos no violentos increased from 201.587 to 204.202
So to summarise 2023 was even a bit worse than 2022
I was in Recoleta last night driving along at about 8pm or so and we saw what looked like a fight or attack in the street, there was one person that seemed to be holding one other down on the floor, it was a bit dispiriting to see everyone walking or driving by and ignoring it. I did suggest that we stop as there were a number of us in a van but everyone just ignored me and pretended I didnât say anything.
A week and a half ago, on a Saturday night, I was again in Santiago (Centro, at about 11pm maybe) at night, and my friend told me that she saw someone running away with two stolen bottles of gas. I was a bit slow to react and it took me a while to figure out what was going on. I should have chased this guy because it was low risk, he wouldnât have been able to fight me with two bottles of heavy gas in his hands and would probably have put the gas down.
Just some hesitancy in my reaction, plus in both cases I was with either a female friend or a date which makes me reluctant to intervene.
And pulled out a knife.
Honestly, I am aghast at how cheaply life is valued here nowadays. Victims of assaults are sometimes killed even when they donât offer resistance.
So please, do like Chileans do, donât get involved!!
I second that. Only if you or someone close to you should one get involved in events that could result in permanent injury or death.
My family now do not permit me to even go to the supermarket by myself when I stay in Santiago (Quilicura), And yesterday when I traveled to Santiago to stay a week or so at that apartment in Quilicura, my wife witnessed a wallet or phone snatching on the bus as it arrived in Santiago by a man who got up and surged forward to be one of the first off before the bus stopped at itâs anden and caught a passenger on the Metro probing for her phone beneath his jacket covered arm. She slapped his hand away and commented loudly (I was behind some other passengers and did not immediately know what was going on) and the nearby passengers cowered and looked away and quickly left upon reaching the next stop.
Agreed too. Itâs too risky trying to get involved in a situation like that. Really, going to anywhere like Recoleta or downtown at night these days doesnât seem to be a good idea.
From a purely selfish point of view it seems obviously best not to get involved however I think if citizens get involved, at least by shouting out and calling the police, then this is going to cause less crime.
There might be a bit of a contradiction between complaining about crime and just ignoring crimes and not even reporting them?
Anyway, I am not recommending any course of action to anyone.
The problem is that law enforcemnet in Chile have their hands tied by the establishment and far left and even if they went after most of the criminals that they already know about, the far left captured criminal justice system will 90% of the time just let them go, drop charges or even go after the individual police officers that arrested them and at times even reward certain criminals with a lifetime pension that far exceeds the basic pension that old folks get.
Chileans can be great make a point vigilantes with citizen arrests and the humiliation and literally stripping and duct taping of offenders while the police finally arrive an hour later. Of course, many like to get a few puches and kicks or more in after being victimized by those types and some end up being the persecuted if the dude ends up dying. Same thing for self-defense, many victims end up being persecuted because of the criminals they killed.
A good local example of how Chileans can come together to address a âproblemâ was many years ago in a working class barrio in one of the hills of San Antonio. After a series of assualts and a rape of a local minor in a home invasion, the locals all knew the nexus of the criminal activities was a house occupied by a Santiaguino and his gang selling drugs. Both the locals AND the police knew about it but the police did nothing. So after the rape, the enraged locals came together, men and women, went to the house, forced the inhabitants to flee and dismantled the house, removed itâs contents and burned them in the middle of the street. I was surprised that this never made much news or is remembered (like many citizen arrests and actions) and what real impact has it made to the shit we are living in now? â Ummm, none â
Then the unspoken things. Chile is a small country in the sense of itâs centralized personal data systems whether technological or old fashioned word of mouth within and between various communities. If you end up killing or injuring a criminal, you may be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life and fear greatly for family and friends or pets far removed from your actions.
And finally, the use of guns, the shocking Caribbeanization of crime and a government that fails in itâs primary obligation to provide justice and security for the law abiding are more than convincing that getting involved is now a foolâs errand.
As my husband (a lawyer) always says, the judges are pro-reo. Itâs how they are trained. The human rights of a criminal are considered more important than the human rights of a crime victim.
