The Morning Report
Get the news and information you need to take on the day.
The Los Angeles Times has an absolutely classic story about police bribes in Tijuana.
It seems that officials there are dedicating a stretch of road that runs from San Ysidro to the coast as a “no-ticket zone.”
The Times says that Tijuana’s police chief has told his officers not to stop vehicles with foreign plates — “especially from California.”
Police say that this time, unlike before, their efforts will make a difference.
Corrupt cops have long slipped around such measures to prey on retired American expatriates, surfers and college kids on weekend getaways.
The cops there are under pressure from developers to cut back on taking bribes from real-estate hungry Americans looking to Mexico to buy beachfront homes.
[A] former Rosarito Beach police officer said many cops viewed the building boom as a bribe-taking bonanza on par with the filming of “Titanic” in Baja in the mid-1990s, when he and other police regularly stopped studio workers and visiting Hollywood executives.
“They were easy targets because of the language difference and because they were always in hurry,” the former patrol officer said. “Those were great days.”
Real estate professionals don’t see it that way.