I completely understand how people could feel concerned and intimidated regarding the notion of traveling to Baja given, what we call, the mischaracterizations in the press.

It is always interesting to hear what people think about crime in our little area. As a person who lives here with the other 14,000 Americans who call this home I can assure you our chance of being involved in a violent crime is likely less than people who live in Southern California. We see the news from LA and people are murdered, mugged and carjacked every day. But I'll bet it is not part of YOUR life. I'll bet it only affects your thoughts about going to south central? We don't hang out in east TJ and fact is if you don't participate in the drug business and you don't look for trouble it won't find you. Sort of like where you live.

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As an American living on the coast in Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico I can’t disagree more with your caller from San Antonio. She is not here and only gets the view of the press and those involved in the violence heading north who are almost exclusively people involved in the drug trade.

We are not affected AT ALL by any drug violence. We live in a quite beautiful community with nearly 15,000 other Americans. None are leaving and none of them feel unsafe. No tourists have been involved in any of the drug violence in all of Baja. Quite the contrary, going to the states is a stressful event for us. I live here with my wife and 6 year old daughter and she benefits from an incredible education at a private bilingual academy. We cross the border every week, drive up and down the coast in a nice car every day and do not restrict our movements at night. WE NEVER HAVE ANY PROBLEMS!

There are parts of Tijuana that we will not drive through in the middle of the night but that can be said of any large US...

 

On January 7, 2009 ABC decided to air  yet another  story about Pat Weber’s incident in Baja.    ABC portrayed the story as if it happened yesterday in the middle of Rosarito Beach.   When in fact, that incident  happened 3 hrs south of Ensenada  in a remote area in September 2007.

 

If you GOOGLE  these key words:  ‘Pat Weber Baja’  you’ll see that this same story has been reported, re-reported, re-re-re-reported  in the US media  via TV, Natl and local Newspapers, AP etc since Oct 2007.   GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS RETURNED  13 pages/10 articles on each page about Pat Weber’s horrible  experience.  Yet ABC's ‘news’ reporting gives the impression that it just happened and incidences like theirs are happening over, and over and over again.  Yes it was horrible what happened to Pat Weber,  but  random violence happens everywhere.   Why doesn't the media report per capita statistics.  I challenge the media to do some real investigating  reporting and find a violent crime against a American born...

 

Last month I took a trip up to Los Angeles to visit my mother in the hospital. She was recovering from surgery and I spent an afternoon with her. My wife, my daughter and I spent the night with my father at my childhood home. I woke up the next morning, made coffee and turned on ABC channel 7 morning news. The chain of reports that proceeded was horrifying. There were three separate stories regarding local drive by shootings, mass shootings in public places and the shooting of children while they waited for a bus. There was a story about another murder in Beverly Hills and another about a woman found frozen in dry ice in a posh Newport Beach hotel.

All of this was shocking to me… As an American living in Baja what came next shocked me even more. The next story was a 15 second blurb that basically...