Homicides increase substantially in Mexico's Tijuana, Baja California, but non-turf-war-related crime diminishes

On 22 August, the director of Tijuana's municipal police, Mario Martinez, provided crime statistics for the first seven months of the year. In the year to July 2018, violent theft against individuals and businesses decrease by 37%; violent and non-violent vehicle theft decreased by 11% and 41%, respectively; violent residential theft decreased by 35%; violent street robberies by 52%; and overall robberies decreased by 35%. The apparent decline in these crimes comes in the context of increasing homicide rates in Tijuana resulting from an escalating turf-war between several organised crime groups including the Sinaloa Cartel, the Arellano-Félix Cartel, and the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG). The three-month murder rate to July 2018 reached 174.8 per 100,000 inhabitants compared to a two-year average rate of 117.3 per 100,000. The national-level homicide rate in 2017 was approximately 20 per 100,000.

Significance: Although inter-cartel violence is escalating in Tijuana, driving up the city's homicide rate, it is not being accompanied an increase in other violent criminal actions. This is likely to indicate that the criminal structures competing for control of the city enjoy enough revenue from trafficking activities to limit their diversification into other forms of crime. It also suggests these groups retain some control over the criminal activities that a perpetrated in the city which dissuades other criminal actors from perpetrating crimes crimes that directly affect the population. This is in contrast to other areas currently experiencing a surge in violence as a result of turf wars. In the tourist hot spot on Cancún, for example, turf wars between factions of the Zetas and the Gulf, Sinaloa, and the CJNG has been accompanied by an increase in in violent robberies of individuals, suggesting the organisations operating there are unable or unwilling to influence the activities of street-level criminals and that an environment of permissiveness reigns. The splintering of the main cartels operating in Tijuana would indicate that the risk of non-turf-related violent crime is increasing as new, smaller groups target new sources of revenue.