Glimmer of hope for Mexico’s missing students despite a rise in murders

Mexico City: Two cities in Mexico are under siege as the country attempts to crackdown on a surge in homicides, police corruption and gang violence.

After years of insulation from the worst of the violent crime that has plagued the country, Mexico City has seen homicides rise 45 per cent since 2014, according to a report published on Wednesday. Police have had a tough job keeping the law and order in Acapulco in recent years. Photo: Glen McCurtayne/Coleman Rayner Meanwhile, gang violence and police corruption in the seaside city of Acapulco has prompted Mexican authorities to replace local cops with state police and the military.

Using thousands of police reports from 2009 to 2016, think tank Mexico Evalua found that the growth in homicides in Mexico City has been largely concentrated in areas that have long been dangerous, rather than a general dispersion across the city.

Although overall still well below the national average, and comparable to some US cities, the violence in Mexico City is getting worse.

Of the 6418 police reports the city government shared with Mexico Evalua, more than a quarter were unusable, partly because they were wrongly classified, contained misinformation or were incomplete, the think tank said.

In the south-west at Acapulco, federal officials have deployed state police and the military to bring peace to a spot once a glamorous resort favoured by Hollywood celebrities that has become one of the most murderous cities on Earth. The gate of the once popular restaurant "Los Braseros" on the seaside boulevard La […]

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