The neighborhood has been calm for two or three weeks. But it may not last. Apparently, the Policía Preventiva have a new tactic. It was triggered by a recent spate of robberies of local houses. One of them was a policeman’s house. As a consequence, the PP have put out a standing order of apprehension I believe for both of the main delinquents in the neighborhood. They (and their families) were informed that the two lads would be arrested on sight; and for that reason, they have disappeared from view. Lying low, as we used to say. Peace reigns, and it is a good feeling.
At the same time, the two stolen cameras have just been replaced, in slightly different places. They now sit on metal frames that make it harder to steal them. Though I put nothing beyond the capacities of the past camera thieves-guerrillas. Three policemen spent the entire day standing by as the cameras went up. The installers hammered little plaques into the walls next to the cameras that said, “City of Guanajuato. The PP monitors these cameras twenty-four hours a day.”
Experts from both the PP and from the installers chose one very poor place, in my opinion. The lads will, I’m afraid, figure it out quickly. You can enter the vacant lot right in front of us, walk through the unfinished building, stand in a door-window opening to the alley right over the vulnerable camera, and drop the largest rock you can carry right on top of it. I would say the camera had a week or two at the most before this happens. I am encouraging the installers and owners of this camera to embed it in a steel cage that can withstand the heaviest rock you can carry.
The aunt of one of the suspects emerged from her house and said she too would be interested in having one of the cameras on her house, and of course the various codes and apparatus that she assumed would be given to her for nothing, so that she too could contribute toward the security of the side alley from whence most of the insecurity derives. I believe the Ladies’ Detective Agency have told the installers and the PP to not even to dream of acceding to her wishes.
My brother in New Hampshire will be pleased that the two new cameras are up. He checks remotely a couple of times a day, to see what’s happening in his brother’s (me) environs. What he sees is, to say the least, in great contrast to life in his New England village of swishing SUV’s, green lawns and white clapboard houses with black shutters. Here he sees narrow allies (too narrow for cars) which are also stairs, rising or dropping between graffitied walls, everybody on foot, carrying children and groceries—a whole different economic world, inaccessible to the police cruiser with its flashing lights and the promise of law and order.
