Costa Rica Lets Assassins Go

A few years ago assassins came to Costa Rica from Colombia. Part of a drug cartel, their assignment was to murder several government offcials who were trying to curb the drug trafficking here. The men were caught and arrested. What do you think the penalty was for conspiring to assassinate government officials? Death? No, there is no capital punishment here. Life in prison? Wrong again. These men suffered the dreaded fate of...deportation. That's right. Costa Rica sent them back to Colombia without even trying them.

I tell you this because it is the typical Costa Rican response to crime. Negociate and appease or do nothing. Think I'm exaggerating? Read on...

Our landlady Debbie Sasso was storing clothing in a meeting room on the property a few years ago when a thief broke the window and stole it all. Debbie, who is Dutch, went looking for the clothes and found them in a mom-and-pop convenience store in a nearby neightborhood. She confronted the store owner about selling her clothes and he cooperated with her and told her from whom he had bought them. She went to the thief's house and confronted him. The man was irate that the store owner had ratted him out and went to rough up the store owner. But the owner had other ideas and made a pre-emptive strike. He punched the thief in the nose and flattened him, leaving him bleeding profusely. At that point, Debbie went to the OIJ, Costa Rica's version of the FBI, and brought two officers back. They stopped two blocks away from the scene.

"Well, aren't you going to do something?" she asked.

"No, he might have a gun," they replied. And that was it, except that they told Debbie that they knew this particular thief and she could file a formal complaint against him and add it to the stack of complaints already pending in his case. Seeing the futility of it all, Debbie went herself and demanded her clothing back from the thief's family (who were wearing them) and the store owner. She got a few things back, which is more than most people get.

So you can see how ineffective law enforcement is here.

To end on a positive note, in the last blog I shared some of the more interesting cultural contrasts between the US and Costa Rica as published in an English newspaper here. Here is one of the many good things about being here:

In the US...

You throw or give away appliances, from blenders to washing machines, when something goes very wrong, because the repairs cost more than the items are worth.

In Costa Rica...

you can afford to keep repairing things time and again at a minimal cost.

Next blog: You've seen how the police and government respond to crime. How do the people react when something happens?...