Working on the Vecino Vigilante program

Published March 1st, 2022

After being one of the neighborhoods with the highest crime rates in San Miguel de Allende, residents of San Antonio have been working for three years and six months with the Vecino Vigilante program, supported by the City Hall, Municipal Public Security and the Ministerial Police, which has allowed crime in this population settlement, inhabited by Mexicans and foreigners, to go down.

Juan Antonio Gómez, president of the neighborhood’s Security Committee, mentioned that it was formed more than three years ago, when “we realized that this social phenomenon (crime) had overtaken the authorities.

He acknowledged that it is impossible to put a policeman to watch every street or every business, but there was something they could do: “put a vigilant neighbor in charge of his street and his house,” Juan commented.

ONGOING WORK

The neighbors of San Antonio put together the program and had a collaboration with the municipality during the three years of the last administration, but they have managed to give continuity to the Vecino Vigilante with the current administration.

“We thought it was going to take longer in this administration to resume the security committees in the neighborhoods, but fortunately they contacted us and we were the first current committee renewed with the new city council,” said Juan Antonio.

With the work done by the neighbors, they were able to identify the most conflictive areas of the neighborhood and, after holding a discussion with part of the foreign community that lives in this area of San Miguel de Allende, they were able to install robotic cameras in the red spots and where there is no video surveillance by C4 and private individuals, in order to have the entire area covered.

“We have 32 points monitored by robots where the neighbors who border those streets have access to see in real-time and the cameras work 24 hours a day, the moment we detect any activity, automatically that video is passed to the group and from there it is passed directly to the WhatsApp group of 911, which allows us to send voice messages, video, and photos,” said the president of the security committee.

In addition, they, in turn, send it to corporations such as Public Security, Civil Protection, Firemen or Red Cross and this has worked excellently, since they have the statistics that currently have the lowest rates in terms of home robberies, after being the neighborhood that had the highest rate of the entire city.

FOREIGN AND LOCAL DELINQUENTS

Juan Antonio Gómez commented that previously they registered one home burglary per day since they are the largest neighborhood in San Miguel and the one that has more foreigners living in it with their own house, which became a very attractive neighborhood for the lovers of the unwanted.

“At that time criminal gangs were detected in an organized manner coming from Apaseo, Celaya, Irapuato, Leon, and Mexico City. This was detected in conjunction with the Ministerial Police when the investigations were carried out, our cameras showed vehicles that already had reports of committing other crimes in other cities and in other areas of the city”.

The joint work of neighbors with the Municipal Police and the Ministerial Police allowed us to eradicate these foreign gangs; however, “we discovered that there were people coming from other neighborhoods to commit crimes in our streets and to this we added the local delinquency we had living in the neighborhood, so that is why San Antonio had an insecurity problem”, said Antonio Gómez.

SECURITY INTENSIFIED

In view of this situation, they talked with the neighbors to reinforce all the internal security of their homes and “through the cameras we reinforce the external security in the streets, and our objective is to work together with the citizens and the government, it is the best combination there can be”.

Although he said that the neighbors are not security experts nor do they have the capacity to arrest anyone, he did emphasize that they are the ones who know their streets and “what better than us to alert that there is something strange or suspicious that does not correspond”.

The Municipal Police have done their part, said Antonio, as they have supported them when they report an incident and have managed to capture several criminals, and together they have given a positive result, so he hopes that more neighborhoods begin to work with the Vecino Vigilante program.

All reports are made through the Watching San Antonio web page, where the vigilant neighbors have access and they also generate the report to 911 or to the corresponding authority.

The cameras that are used have motion detectors, voice to be able to speak through them if something suspicious is detected without exposing the integrity of the person monitoring the street, as well as light for the night, you can send the clear video so they have from the type of clothing, or type of car, color and license plates in real-time to the authorities.

This is the success of Vecino Vigilante, which has cost 3 years and 6 months to all the neighbors of Colonia San Antonio, and now they can say that it is a success and they are willing to share it with other neighborhoods that would like to obtain this type of technology.