COZUMEL — The lack of police to patrol areas such as the center of the city, which is visited by thousands of tourists daily, allowed a senior couple who arrived aboard a cruise ship to be assaulted in broad daylight in Benito Juarez Park, in the heart of Cozumel.
The shortage of personnel of the Ministry of Public Security to establish surveillance within areas of tourist importance, such as Benito Juárez park, is already beginning to be noticed, and criminals are the first to take advantage of this situation, said Jaime Carillo, an employee of a commercial establishment near the scene of the robbery.
Sources within the Municipal Police announced that around 11 am Wednesday Nov. 9, Edwin and Giselle Smith, a tourist couple who descended from the cruise ship ‘Norwegian Dawn’, a vessel that docked at the Punta Langosta pier approximately 500 meters from the park, were stripped of their backpack, carrying their passports, credit cards, cash and cell phones.
While they were walking a man used a stick to strip the backpack and escaped, just as they were about to enter an ATM at a bank branch located on First Street South and Fifth Avenue.
(PHOTO: sipse.com)
Among the documents that were stripped were boarding passes that identify them as passengers of the cruise, so that this holiday on the island was ruined, and a complaint was filed with the Attorney General.
With a copy of that document they were to have access to the ship to which they returned, according to unofficial reports, but they lost their documents and bank cards.
The Public Security administration does not have enough elements to provide security to visitors, because the ranks of the corporation have been decimated by a wave of layoffs, ordered by Mayor Perla Cecilia Tun Pech.
Source: sipse.com
