New Cameras Will Help Hold Police Accountable When At Work
The Tulum Police Force has been gifted body cams by local businesses to help keep them accountable to tourists and locals while assisting the force in investigations. Tulum will be the first force in Southeast Mexico to have the technology.
The Tulum Hotel Association announced that they had donated eighty brand new body cameras for the city’s police force. Spending a combined half a million pesos (around $25 thousand USD) on the project, viewing the added security benefits as paramount to the tourist experience in the region.
Tulum’s police force has struggled to keep up with the city’s surging growth, with some estimates suggesting that its size is still more suited to a far smaller town. With time, the police force will catch up in numbers, but local tourism is blatantly concerned in the meantime.
Police cams are now an important part of any officer’s equipment in many other countries like the US, UK, and across Europe. They have successfully helped protect police officers who have performed their duties correctly and defended members of the public who have been wrongfully accused. They are regularly used as evidence in court in high-profile cases.
For tourists, the new addition to the Tulum police force’s equipment means added protection for them if used properly.
A major issue facing tourists in Mexico is police extortion. Some police officers, often on small salaries, abuse the power they control to convince tourists to give them money. They do this in a manner of ways.
The most popular method is stopping a tourist on the street in a car and claiming they have committed some small crime. This could be a driving infraction or a drunk and disorderly accusation. Whether they have actually committed the crime is generally not relevant in many cases. Officers will often tell the person they can pay a small fine in person on the spot, or risk arrest. Many tourists will comply immediately, give up some money, and go about their day. If someone refuses and asks to be taken to the station, the officer will often back off, proving that the stop was unlawful.
More serious cases see officers take visitors around ATMs to withdraw much larger sums of cash. A story went viral in 2021 when a group of French tourists was extorted for hundreds of dollars worth of cash, withdrawing the money under threat of arrest or worse.
The Cancun Sun’s own comments section has highlighted multiple instances where police have abused their authority.
It is hoped that the presence of the body cams will help reduce incidents like those mentioned above, assuming the police officers use them correctly. In other countries, when a camera is turned off on duty, the officer in question is generally breaking protocol and will receive some punishment regardless of the outcome of the rest of the case.
Tulum has already stated that any officers caught extorting tourists will be fired and charged immediately.
Police officers will need to be required to use them if the technology is to be useful. It will add peace of mind for tourists and locals alike whose relationship with the police is rocky.
The news comes as Tulum’s own version of Cancun’s C5 surveillance system is implemented. The city should be equipped with an array of security cameras dotted around strategic points to help ward off any potential violence and assist the investigations into any crimes that do take place. The body cams will, in theory, take care of the places that traditional CCTV will be unable to go.
The success of the program remains to be seen, but tourists should be pleased with the growing investment in the security of the popular beach town.
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