Ahead of a May 20 trip to Ciudad Juarez, Mexican President Felipe Calderon took to his Twitter account to praise the embattled border city for a 60 percent drop in murders from late 2010 to the present.
“Visiting Ciudad Juarez. With the program 'Todos Somos Juarez' [We Are All Juarez], the homicides have been reduced from a daily average of 11 to 4,” the president Tweeted.
He followed with a further post saying, “In the 60 percent drop in the murder rate in Juarez, the actions of the Federal Police have been key.”
A similar announcement was made by Chihuahua Governor Cesar Duarte several weeks ago, but this was the first time the president had commented on it.
Calderon offered no explanation of how the Federal Police deployment succeeded in lowering the violence when the preceding army operation had failed. The Federal Police announced a security plan in November that involved a heavy concentration of officers to create “islands” of security in the most dangerous areas of the city. However, little has been published on the Federal Police’s tactics since then, so it’s difficult to assess whether the agency’s new plan had much of an impact.
Nor did Calderon explain what Todos Somos Juarez, a relatively modest and long-term social-spending program, had to do with the drop in violence.
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