Almost three-quarters of Mexicans feel unsafe in the city in which they live, according to a new survey that also found that Acapulco is the worst city for police corruption.
Carried out by national statistics agency Inegi in the first half of June, the National Survey on Urban Public Security found that 73.9% of respondents consider their city unsafe.
The figure is slightly below those recorded by the same poll in March and June last year, when 74.6% and 75.9% of respondents said their city was unsafe.
Ecatepec, a México state municipality that is part of greater Mexico City, recorded the highest perception of insecurity among residents followed by Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz; Naucalpan, México state; Villahermosa, Tabasco; Tapachula, Chiapas; and Uruapan, Michoacán.
The percentage of residents who said they felt unsafe in those cities ranged between 97.4% and 88.9%.
In contrast, the cities where the lowest perceptions of insecurity were recorded were, in order: San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León – an affluent municipality in the Monterrey metropolitan area; Mérida, Yucatán; San Nicolás de los Garza, Nuevo León; Los Cabos, Baja California Sur; Durango, Durango; and Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco.
The percentage of residents who said they felt unsafe in those cities ranged between 18.9% and 43.1%.
The survey also determined the percentages of people who were recent victims of crime and acts of police corruption.
At a national level, Inegi said that at least one person in 34.9% of households was a victim of robbery or extortion during the first half of 2019.
Atizapán fared worst and three other México state municipalities in the metropolitan area of Mexico City – Chimalhuacán, Cuatitlán and Ecatepec – were also among the five worst cities in the country in terms of victim rates for those two crimes. León, Guanajuato, ranked second worst.
Tampico, Tamaulipas; Los Mochis, Sinaloa; Campeche, Campeche; San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León; and Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, recorded the lowest rates of victims of robbery and extortion.
The survey determined that 15.5% of respondents came into contact with public security authorities during the first half of the year and of those, 47.3% were victims of an act of corruption.
Just under 74% of poll respondents who had an encounter with police in Acapulco, Guerrero, reported being forced to pay a bribe or suffering from some other act of corruption, making the Pacific coast resort city the worst in the country in that respect.
Los Mochis, Sinaloa, recorded the second highest police corruption rate, with 71.9% of polled residents reporting that they were victims.
Next worse were the México state municipalities of Naucalpan, Tlalnepantla and Atizapán followed by Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, and Ecatepec.
Source: El Universal (sp), Debate (sp)
