Juarez back on list of most violent cities

After years of recovering from being the murder capital of the world, Cd. Juarez is back on the list of most dangerous cities.

The report by the Citizen’s Council for Public Security and Justice puts Juarez at number 37 of 50, following 607 homicides in 2016, but the Chihuahua State Attorney General’s Office doesn’t agree with the classification.

The State Attorney’s Office said in a public statement the report arbitrarily added 30% more homicides to 2016, without which Juarez wouldn’t be on the list, and it only counts homicides while ignoring other crimes, making the “violent city” classification inaccurate.

The state prosecutor’s office claimed there had been 468 homicides in 2016.

The Citizen’s Council for Public Security and Justice said the difference came about since they also used sources from independent agencies, because they claim the government isn’t accurately reporting deaths. They say they’re counting every single violent death and not just the number of homicide cases in general, which could include several deaths in a single case.

According to the Chihuahua State Attorney General’s office own numbers, violent crime has been on the rise in Juarez for the past couple of years. Residents said the effect on the public doesn’t compare to what was going on several years ago.

“The rise can be seen in the news, where you see how many people have died each day,” said Jesus Aguilar, a father ABC-7 spoke with.

“Our family has started to be more cautious and take steps to go out less at night.”

“Things are a lot calmer than three, four years ago. It hasn’t really affected we go out,” said Maria Teresa Ruiz, another Juarez resident.

Residents described the violence as more contained, not harming the general public as it had before.

While the violence hasn’t affected residents openly, some are afraid it could hurt the city.

“There’s not a lot of people from the US who come over here, I’m afraid if we go back to our old reputation tourism will be scared off,” Jose Luis Gamez said.

The state attorney’s office also said the report ignored cities with less than 300 thousand population, and excluded suburbs around larger cities, which Juarez doesn’t have.

St. Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Detroit all ranked as more deadly in the report at numbers 14, 26, 34 and 36 respectively.