Police struggle to contain crime after hurricane
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO» Hurricane Maria ripped apart daily life in Puerto Rico, but it hasn’t stopped the crime that has long plagued the poverty-stricken island.
In the Rio Piedras neighborhood, Jessica Rojas was at work last week making sandwiches at a Subway restaurant — a cashonly operation because of the limited power supply — when two young gunmen burst through the door demanding money.
“Esto es un asalto,” one yelled. “This is a robbery!”
Rojas alerted an off-duty cop working security in a backroom. A gunfight erupted. Rojas cowered on the ground as one gunman was gravely wounded and the other escaped. Also wounded in the crossfire were a local prosecutor and his wife who had been dining inside.
“Things here are hot,” said Rojas, a former Hollywood, Fla., resident. “It’s not easy living without water and electricity, and it’s giving a lot of people (opportunity) to rob us. It’s getting worse. We need more police.”
More than a month after Hurricane Maria wrecked the island, Puerto Rico’s overwhelmed police force of 13,000 officers is struggling to contain crime, just as before — but now with longer shifts, against emboldened criminals and on streets cloaked in darkness.
“It’s easier to burglarize — there are no alarms, no phone systems. It’s dark. The delinquents are taking advantage of the crisis that Puerto Rico is in,” said police Officer Heriberto Soto during a night patrol Tuesday that included calls for a robbery shooting, homeless men torching the outsides of stolen cables to steal the copper inside and a high-speed car chase of suspected gunmen.
And the future for law enforcement on the island is bleak. The department has lost about 4,000 officers in five years and, because of the island’s economic crisis, cannot count on recruits.
Since the hurricane, there have been at least 34 homicides. Crime has returned to pre-storm levels, said Puerto Rico Police Superintendent Hector Pesquera. Puerto Rico’s crime rate has been largely “out of sight, out of mind” for years in the eyes of mainland authorities, who have given the island’s law-enforcement community precious few resources, he said.