2015 has officially set new record for murders in Costa Rica

A brutal, broad-daylight murder in October in a San Jose neighborhood in October sparked national outcry over increasing organized crime violence.

December 11^th, 2015 (ICR News) As of Thursday, a total of 527 murders have been officially recorded by Costa Rican officials this year.  As a result, 2015 will set a new record for homicides in the country.

With 20 days left in the year, the figure is now equal to that of the whole of 2010, the year that had recorded the highest number of homicides to date, and the Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ) are estimating that Costa Rica will end this year with about 550 homicides, setting a new record.

There are also a number of deaths not counted in the statistics but have been labeled “potential” homicides.

At the current rate, Costa Rica will end the year with a homicide rate of 11 per 100,000; the World Health Organization (WHO) describes a homicide rate of 10 per 100,000 or greater as an “epidemic.”

Just this week, 8 homicides were recorded in 17 hours between Wednesday and Thursday, including the brutal murder of a US woman in a San Jose hotel room.

August was this year’s most violent month, with 63 confirmed homicides.  This month is looking to be on par, with an average so far of 1.9 homicides per day.

Still, Costa Rica’s homicide rate pales in comparison to Central America’s most violent countries, like El Salvador, where 50 murders in a single day are not uncommon.  Part of the violent “northern triangle,” El Salvador is set to reach a homicide rate of nearly 94 per 100,000 inhabitants this year, with officials in that country estimating they will end the year with 6,000 homicides in a country of about 6.3 million people.

Those statistics are not comforting to many people in Costa Rica, however, who fear their own country is heading down a dangerous path of gang and narco-related violence.

According to official estimates, some 30 percent of homicides this year were attributed to organized crime.

A brutal, broad-daylight murder in a San Jose neighborhood in October sparked national outcry over increasing organized crime violence.  A security camera captured the scene, as multiple gunmen with fully automatic AK-47’s intercepted a taxi and sprayed the vehicle with as many as 100 rounds on an otherwise peaceful Friday morning, killing passenger Dennis Patricio Omier Taylor, and leaving his girlfriend and the taxi driver seriously wounded.

Taylor, the target of the assassination, was himself linked to at least 15 murders and was a suspected hit man for a Limon-based narco gang, the leader of which was himself gunned down while traveling in a taxi in July.

The brazenness of the crime appalled many Costa Ricans, but such crimes could become more common according to statements by Attorney General, Jorge Chavarria in late November.

Chavarria said in late November that Costa Rican assassins and contract killers are traveling to Mexico to receiving specialized training from that country’s cartels, including the Sinaloa cartel.  Chavarria said Costa Rican hitmen are traveling to the country to learn skills such as target practice, intelligence gathering, escape tactics, and how to use high-caliber automatic weapons.

Meanwhile, Criminals in Costa Rica continue to enjoy more impunity for their crimes each year, according to the latest annual study that has come to be dubbed the Impunómetro (Impunity Meter), published by Jurisis, a consulting subsidiary of a law firm founded by former Minister of Public Security, Juan Diego Castro.

The Impunómetro uses reported crime figures from the Ministry of Public Security (MSP) for 2014 to determine what percentage of those crimes went unpunished as of the end of 2015.

In the case of intentional homicide, of 477 cases in 2014, only 199 have so far resulted in convictions, meaning 58.3 percent of cases remain unsolved at least one year later.