Drive safe in Mexico City: historical reduction in vehicle theft with or without violence

As an unprecedented fact, the local administration of Mexico City presumed that over a three-year period the crime incidence of vehicle theft fell by as much as 63.1 percent. This is because Claudia Sheinbaum, head of government of the national capital, showed the official record of this crime in the last 25 years.

Through social networks, Dr. Sheinbaum Pardo published the graphs showing the reduction in vehicle theft with violence and vehicle theft without violence, which were reduced by 63.1% and 55.5%, respectively.

According to the graph presented by the doctor in environmental engineering at UNAM, from 1997 to 2022 there has been a trend in both crimes, but from 2017 to the end of 2018, these items increased. This means that during the last two years in office of Miguel Ángel Mancera, the current PRD senator, both the theft of vehicles with and without violence was seen as a challenge for the incoming president.

However, over the years, the government of Morena National Regeneration Movement (Morena) in CDMX addressed the problem in time, so that, by 2020, there was a similar incidence to that of 2016. Subsequently, it continued its path towards reduction.

If you read the graph in detail, you can understand that the reduction is substantial, since in 1997 it was estimated that more than 70 vehicles were violently stolen daily, while in 2022 the average is estimated to be 4.8. With regard to robbery without violence, in 1997 more than 100 cars were stolen daily, now it is estimated 12.1, which means a reduction of 900% in 25 years.

The theft of vehicles in the then Federal District (DF) was so widely known that in the 1990s the custom of building bars in the parking lots of housing complexes was established; it was also the rise of security sticks and car alarms. In addition to this, with the arrival of the new century and portable digital technology, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) became part of vehicle care in the national capital.

The graph also shows a considerable decline in vehicle theft with violence between 2010 and 2011; however, during that same period (at the head of government of Marcelo Ebrard), in non-violent robbery, a plateau appeared that lasted until 2014.

On his own, Omar García Harfuch, head of the Secretary of Citizen Security of the CDMX (SSCCDMX), has presumed his achievements in the fight against crime, this because at the beginning of March, the local secretary said that in 58 operations in Ciudad Segura “in Cuauhtémoc and Iztapalapa, 176 were arrested felony offenders, 142 in flagrante and 45 of them drug users who will be able to obtain their freedom. Together, significant quantities of drugs, auto parts and weapons were secured.” He also pointed out in a Twitter thread that 33 alleged criminals were arrested during the execution of 13 search warrants in those districts.

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