OVERVIEW:
There have been community anti-crime organizations in the South Caribbean for years, dealing with crime issues typical of any tourist beach town: assaults, robberies, and less occasionally, attacks of a more violent nature. Attendance at various neighborhood watch groups tended to follow a cyclical pattern that spiked with the occurrence of higher profile crimes then rapidly diminished. 

A meeting in San Jose in 2010 with Jorge Rojas, Director of OIJ, drove home the point that, owing to the extremely low percentage of crimes reported (estimated to be in the mid to low teens), the canton of Talamanca had, on paper at least, one the lowest crime rates in the country. Without the statistics in the form of denuncias, the area received fewer personnel and resources than the conditions in the zone called for.

Community meeting with police

As a response, we created an online database with which the community could report crimes and compile its own statistics, to gain a clearer picture of what was occurring, to identify problem regions and recurring patterns that might aid in prevention, as well as to demonstrate that the incident rate was far greater than was being captured in official numbers. Several barriers existed to adoption, chiefly a strong reluctance, in a town whose economy relies almost solely on tourism, to openly discuss crime for fear of jeopardizing commerce.

A Facebook group was launched, and the ability to see and discuss in near real time how crime is affecting the neighborhood proved a compelling experience.  A consensus developed that there was far more to be gained than lost from this sort of open discussion. The group expanded very rapidly, and people motivated each other to get active in the effort.

WORKING WITH THE COMMUNITY:
Members of the community have met regularly with the Director of OIJ, Ministers of Public Security, Fiscal General, etc in order to bring to attention the needs of the communities Southern Caribbean.  The police chief actively reaches out to the community through regular public meetings and online through the Facebook group.  Similar meetings occur with the Fiscalia.  The Mayor of Talamanca is also very involved, offering full support and participation in the efforts of the local community and maintaining an active Facebook profile.

PROJECTS:
During the past year, Un Caribe Mas Seguro has continued their work and undertaken new projects.  Some highlighted projects:

Online database of Incidents:  This has become the primary source of information used by Fuerza Publica.  The website also shares information on prevention, who to call, how to act and much more information of importance to the local community: http://www.caribeseguro.com

Convenio between CATCCAS and Ministerio de Seguridad Publica: provides a legal framework for binding agreements of cooperation between MSP and the community.

Streetlight project:   a digital inventory map of major streetlights in the region indicating where lights were present, where they needed to be replaced and where they needed to be installed.  This would eliminate some of the “dark zones” where tourists were regularly being assaulted at night.  The map was used to petition ICE into addressing the issues.

Digital map project:  Requested by the Fuerza Publica in order to better identify the local streets and location of residents and businesses.  A new police officer receiving a call to person x’s house will be able to pull up that person’s location on a computer screen at the delegation and speed the response time.

Rise in Official Denuncias:  Victims who saw little hope of individual justice started filing denuncias for the benefit to the community as a whole that arises from more accurate reporting and statistics.

Police station renovation

Fuerza Publica Capacitacion:  Security training program and certification for businesses was offered in June.

Beach Guard Program:   ARECHIPU – Association of Residents Playa Chiquita Punta Uva have organized to hire three local beach guards.  Guards patrol the beaches, caution tourists who are not being careful and report suspicious behavior to police.   Since the inception of the program, the previous average of 1 incident per day has been reduced to nearly zero.

Victim’s Assistance:  The Victim Assistance Program helps both locals and tourists through an often complicated judicial process. It supports tourist victims with translation services, helps to file denuncias, helps to cancel stolen credit cards, contacts embassies, offers transportation to OIJ, etc.  In the case of more serious crimes, the program helps to coordinate additional nights at hotels and meals in local restaurants so the victim can complete the denuncia process without incurring additional expenses. The program has been successful in turning victims’ encounter with crime from “a very negative experience in a foreign country” to “the community cares – what a great place”.

Hotel and Business Certification Program:  Project under development to establish guidelines and a certification program in crime prevention for local hotels and businesses.

LESSONS LEARNED AND BEST PRACTICES:

Law enforcement in Costa Rica faces the reality of needing to do more with less, and without the communication, cooperation, and trust of the communities they work in, they will be at a grave disadvantage.

We consider a program like ours critical to the success of citizen security, and elements that in our experience are essential are:

1)  Forum: enables the community to be in direct contact with each other and with law enforcement.  We are fortunate to have a police chief, Leandro Chaverri, who was highly receptive to the idea and very motivated, and we used Facebook because of the high adoption rate and its “stickiness”.

2) Incident Database: a tool for the community to keep track of what is occurring is key. As well, it demonstrates to law enforcement that the community is a serious partner, and is dynamically and independently evaluating their work.

3) Regular Meetings: While the communication afforded through the internet is extremely powerful, face-to-face meetings are critical as well.

Article by Eric Haller. Eric Haller has lived in Cocles for 5 years, plays music, and can be found blogging from time to time at erichaller.com or twittering @haller

The convicted men’s last names are Chinchilla Aguilar, Lanzas Matarrita and Obregón Rodríguez.

The victim, 31 year old university professor, disappeared the morning of December 15, 2009 and was found three days later buried in Penshurt, Limón.

The teacher was believed to have given a ride to the three men on the day of his death. Agents later discovered the victim’s automobile near the same river, and it appeared someone had been tryng to push the vehicle into the water. The victim was en route to Amubri, Bribri, Talamanca, from Limón.

More: Diario Extra: 90 Años de Cárce por Ejecución de Professor

He targeted tourists as his victims would often have left the country before they could identify him. But one victim who was raped and beaten by Brown bravely stayed to make sure he was put away.

Rolando Brown was convicted in the rapes of several women after a string of rapes of foreign tourists, at least one of whom testified at his trial via teleconference from the USA.

Brown was given the maximum sentence and will almost certainly spend the rest of  his life in prison as sources indicate he will not be eligible for early release.

In another crime story follow-up, the prosecutor has confirmed they are investigating William “Big Bill” Holbert for the murder of Jeffrey Arlan Kline, a Chicago lawyer who’s remains were discovered in 2006 but were only recently identified as reported here.

More: La Nacion: Fiscalía investiga a ‘Salvaje Bill’ por homicidio en Limón

Edelson, a retired psychiatric counselor who lived in Novato, California, and his life partner Marsha Wachs, had visited Puerto Viejo several times before and enjoyed the laid back atmosphere, never feeling unsafe before. “We would take cabs, rent bicycles, hitch-hike, walk,” Wachs said. “We never ever felt there was a danger there.”

With the crime still under investigation as a presumed robbery, Edelson’s companions said they were struggling to make sense of the act. Edelson was apparently robbed of a backpack containing sunscreen, a water bottle and a beer, they said, while a watch, ring and other items were left behind.

Anyone with any information on this crime should contact the investigators at the judicial police (OIJ) at 2751-0252 or on their confidential tip line at 800-8000-645.

More: Contra Costa Times: Novato man shot dead on vacation in Costa Rica

A 65 year old tourist, Steven Edelson was shot and killed at Playa Chiquita yesterday morning.

The victim was shot in the back of the neck.

Few details on the crime are clear including the motive.

Investigators are searching for the owner of a bicycle which was found near the victim which wasn’t the victims in the hope that the owner witnessed the event and can give them more information. The bicycle is a banana bike style with a floral patterned seat.

More: La Nacion: OIJ busca dueño de bicicleta relacionada con crimen en Limón

Panama writer Don Winner has now written that he believes there is a second victim buried in the Puerto Viejo area at another house rented by William Dathan Holbert and Laura Michelle Reese when they lived in the area several years ago.

When he put together the facts of the body found under a concrete slab in 2007 as being a victim of Holbert and Reese, there was one fact that didn’t make sense.  Stacie Duckworth, the one-time friend of Holbert and Reese, recounted a story to Winner of visiting a house they were renting and when she saw a pile of fresh earth said “Damn, Bill, that looks like a grave.”

But Duckworth has now confirmed to Winner that this wasn’t the house in Playa Negra where they body was found by investigators in November 2007.  In fact, the house was a vacation home called the “Monkey House”  which is in Playa Cocles (near the Pecora Negra restaurant).  This was rented by Holbert on March 28, 2007 using fake identification from the Cayman Islands with the name “William Julius Caesar”.

While there doesn’t appear to be any other evidence yet suggesting that someone was buried there other than Duckworth’s sighting of the pile of fresh earth, it does seem to be worth further investigation given the widening scope of the killings.

Don Winner, writing for Panama-Guide.com, says he has identified the victim found in November 2007 in Puerto Viejo.

Recounting a chilling interview with previous Puerto Viejo residents Allan and Stacie Duckworth, Winner relates the Duckworth’s story of where they realized that now accused serials killers William Dathan Holbert and Laura Michelle Reese were dangerous and they fled with some of Holbert and Reese’s papers.

Among those papers were documents clearly belonging to Wisconsin lawyer Jeffrey A. Kline and this fact along with a number of other facts from the Duckworth’s as well as the physical description of the victim found have led Winner to conclude that Kline must be the victim who was found buried under a concrete slab in Puerto Viejo.

But although Kline seems to be absent from Wisconsin and being pursued both by the bar association their and his ex-wife for child support, he wasn’t ever reported missing. But the facts seem to line up that those that knew Kline in Wisconsin actually assumed he was deliberately on the run from his old life and so they didn’t report him missing. It also makes him a perfect victim for Holbert and Reese who seemed to have killed a startling number of ex-pats who had moved to Central America, cutting ties with their old lives, and who nobody really noticed when they went missing.

The Costa Rican investigators (the OIJ) have yet to comment on this or state if they will exhume and test the remains against records for Kline.

A link has been made between an unsolved 2007 Puerto Viejo murder and the serial killer couple William “Big Bill” Holbert and Laura Michelle Reese.

Holbert and Reese, both American citizens, have been linked to two bodies found in Bocas del Toro, Panama of other expatriate residents of the Bocas del Toro area.  Holbert has apparently also admitted to investigators that he killed 5 people.   They were captured as they tried to enter Nicaragua from Costa Rica 2 weeks ago and extradited back to Panama.

Holbert and Reese were known to have lived in Puerto Viejo in the Punta Uva area before moving to Panama. They apparently ran a local bar with two other Americans, Alan and Stacie Duckworth, and told others that the four of them were going to start a business together in Panama.  When the news came out of their connection with Holbert and Reese, it had some speculating that the Duckworths could also have been victims. However Don Winner, writing for Panama-Guide.com, managed to track them down and verify that although they did spend several months with Holbert and Reese they ended up going their separate ways.

But questions then began to be asked about the unsolved 2007 murder in Puerto Viejo.  In a separate article Don Winner interviews the couple who owned the vacation home and rented it out through a local real estate agency. It turned out that the home had been leased for 3 months ”sometime in the Spring or Summer of 2007″ to a couple, “Big Bill and Michelle”, known aliases of Holbert and Reese. The renters ended up leaving after only 3 weeks of the 3 month rental.

The body was found when the owners returned in the fall of 2007 and discovered a  new concrete patio had been installed that they knew nothing about. When they had workers tear it up, the body was discovered. The Costa Rican police still have been able to identify the victim in that case but at least it now appears the likely murderers have been caught.

For more on this story, follow the detailed news articles at www.panama-guide.com.

The community sent an expedition of 8 persons to investigate after the community noticed a helicopter entering the area. They found evidence including a landing zone for the helicopter, a camp and core samples taken. A second expedition returned to the area with cameras and three policemen from Bri Bri.

The area is very difficult to access, with no roads, only footpaths used by the indigenous Bri Bri.

Analysis of the photos by experts has confirmed that a exploratory visit by miners was the point of the visit.

The area has been known since the 70s to have high potential for mineral exploration. But the Asociación de Desarrollo de la Reserva Indígena Bribri–Talamanca (Aditibri), which owns the land, is opposed to mining.

Source, photos and video: La Nación: Indígenas descubren minería clandestina en Talamanca

On Thursday, former Cahuita police officers Wálter Angulo Durán and Jorge Jiménez Saldaña were each sentenced to 72 years in prison for their role in two murders which occurred in June 2008.

Two other men, Mauricio Ocampo Cordero and Johansy Mora Rojas, were previously convicted and sentenced to 70 years each for the actual murders.

Angulo and Jiménez, the policemen, used their authority to round up four young men in Cahuita. With drawn guns they confronted the four in the local park, tied them up and eventually delivered them to members of a rival drug gang in Valle de las Estrellas, also on the Caribbean coast, according to testimony. Ocampo and Mora took a knife to their hostages. Two, Roy Sotela Prendergast, 23, and Natanael Rodríguez Obregón, 17, died. Another man suffered serious injuries. A fourth man fled and survived.