Manhunt!

Up the road towards San Jose and near the local hospital is an area known as Loma Linda, or, less pleasantly, the Precaria.

The land itself is, or was, a finca which was the property of  a governmental institution which neglected it….and gradually seasonal workers, Nicaraguans come to pick coffee, started to set up permanent homes there, undisturbed.

Gradually the shacks made of galvanised sheeting became proper houses inhabited by families. The electricity system was hacked into to provide light and power…the water system likewise. It looks like any other village in the area and the council has now started a scheme to legitimise landholding…and to collect taxes!

Being something of an Alsatia, where no writ ran and dubious characters took refuge – many thanks to Mike of A Bit About Britain for reminding me of that part of London’s history – the area has been viewed with disfavour by its neighbours for some time, a view exacerbated now that Costa Rica has changed from being a staging post for the drugs trafficked between Columbia and the U.S.A. to a full blown market in itself.

Our little town has been hit hard…drugs on sale outside the schools, not to speak of inside, where the police now mount raids with drug detection dogs. Drugs on sale outside a popular restaurant and in the central park.

And with drugs use comes crime, to get the money for the next fix, so  not only is there the regular crime of stealing anything not nailed down but also housebreaking and mugging.

Little crime kingdoms have risen and have become profitable enough for other crime kingdoms to try for a takeover.

Last month there was a shoot out in Loma Linda between the resident crooks and a gang from one of the suburbs of San Jose, the action ending suddenly with the arrival of the police.

Ah yes…the police. There have been changes.

The new police chief has sussed that the regular penal judge has a great respect for the presumption of innocence and for the level of proof necessary to disturb that presumption. In other words, the alleged criminal will be free  to leave the court without  stain on his character on a normal judicial day.

Personally I think that the Fiscalia – State Prosecutors – might have something to do with the attitude of the judge. From what I have seen of their preparation of certain cases they seem to be acting as substitute lawyers for the defence…but, however that may be, the new broom has decided that it is only worth mounting large scale action at the weekends, when a duty judge is sent down from San Jose.

These gentlemen, used to the rough and tumble of the city’s summary courts, seem to have a looser definition of the necessary level of proof…bring one of the undesirables before them and they end up in preventive detention before you can say Jack Robinson.

So, last Friday, police nabbed a well known ne’er do well as he and his female companions were boarding a bus for San Jose. They were found to be carrying a quantity of good reported as stolen.

The duty judge issued a search order, and the home at Loma Linda gave up a vast quantity of other goods reported as stolen.

Six months preventive detention, and our boy was marched off to the police cells to await transfer to the jug.

By now public feeling was running high. Social media resounded to calls of ‘Burn the Precaria’, while honest residents of same responded that it was not their fault that they had criminals as neighbours and where were the police…

Public feeling was to run a damned sight higher that night when it was learned that our boy had escaped!

He had asked to go to the loo, and once out of his cell had assaulted the officers and made a run for it…through the main entrance of the police station!

Now, our little town is a bit of a joke, even to itself, but this was too much!

A manhunt was organised.

Local police, the local detective branch, specialised police from San Jose…and even a helicopter!

The ‘phones were hot as locals alerted the police to possible sightings…

He is Barrio St. Cecilia…he is climbing in and out of gardens…

He is in Barrio Carit….running off into a cafetal…

I am in Barrio Corazon de Jesus…I have shut myself into my house and he is in my garden…

I’ve just seen him in Barro San Isidro……

He is in Charcon! No, not that Charcon, the other one….

Thank goodness for the helicopter!

Not being a very bright criminal mastermind, our boy had legged it for home in Loma Linda where one of the San Jose police was keeping an eye on the premises. Spotting him, the lady…for it was a police woman ….attempted to arrest him. He fought back, injuring her, and she later said she thought she would be obliged to use her firearm, but a – female – colleague, alerted by the noise, came to the rescue and between them they managed to overpower him.

He was taken to the local hospital to have his physical state recorded…he seemed to have various injuries related to his refusal to be arrested…and was taken thence to the cells of the local detective branch where I suspect that he will have to exercise a great deal of bladder control before he is taken off to the jug.

As he now faces charges relating to escaping detention and attacks on the police women it is likely that his preventive detention will last rather longer than six months…to the delight of all right thinking people in the area.

Lucky that they caught him before the regular judge came back to work on Monday, though…

 

 

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We’ll go no more a roving so late into the night

Well, not if I have my way they won’t.

Before we bought this finca the wide verge on the top road was a well known spot for nocturnal encounters of both the romantic and the commercial kind.

Gradually, what used to be lines of cars have dwindled to a few individuals and this winter they had disappeared altogether.

However, summer is with us and traditionalists are trying to keep up old customs.

I do not care in the least what people get up to on the verge of the top road…as far as I am concerned they can have a full scale Roman orgy on the Cecil B. de Mille scale complete with female flute players and acrobats.

I also know that with the close knit nature of family life in rural Costa Rica the minute that young lovers booked themselves  into one of the twenty four hour hotels of the area their grannies would know in an instant so often the car in a back road is the only means of obtaining a little privacy.

Equally, the ladies of the night find that their clients do not wish to shell out for a room…

However, I am fed up with the orgiasts who shower their rubbish on the verge and inside my property where the dogs and the sheep can get at it.

It might make a sociological study to examine the rubbish thus deposed…from the nature of it, could you reach conclusions about the social status of the nocturnal noshers?

Fast food containers, chicken bones, plastic bags, cans of beer, mixers and soft drinks prevail…together with the ubiquitous used condoms.

I used to go  out with a strong torch and one of the Staffies, but I am getting to an age when struggling into the dressing gown, finding the shoes and harnessing up Einstein or Bunter is getting to be rather too much of a performance, not to speak of the distance down the drive and along the boundary, so I asked for advice on Facebook as to how to set up a strong searchlight as a deterrent…and had many interesting suggestions following which I asked Don Freddy if his electrician son had any ideas.

Yes, he had several, including electrifying the fence.

I rejected that as I would be sure to forget to turn the thing off and end up electrocuting myself, so he agreed to set up a light with a cable and a switch on the balcony.

How, he asked, would I know that the cars were there without some photocell thing which any passing animal would switch on.

Because Einstein snoozes on the balcony on summer nights and he strongly objects to cars which stop in the area of the house.

Cars which pass are fine.

Cars which stop are not.

Accordingly Don Freddy’s son set up the light on a tree well inside the property…in case some bright spark should steal it.

Night one.

Einstein, roused from slumbers, barks. Going to the window I see tail lights being switched off, so switch on my floodlight.

Crumbs! Don Freddy’s son has excelled himself! You could play a Test Match under it!

The car moves off.

One more turns up later…same gravy.

Night two.

Einstein barks. The sheep, whose pen is close to the road, are also disturbed.

No sign of tail lights, but I switch on the light anyway to illuminate a lithe two legged shape inside my property legging it for the boundary fence with a solid four legged shape rapidly gaining on it.

The four legged shape wins and the night is full of noise and fury…noise from the two legged who is hooked up on the wire in fine World War I style and fury from the four legged who is endeavouring to push him bodily into it.

Monty is loose.

No, I do not have a photograph of Monty in action – you would have to have a screw loose to  hang about when he is – but from an abandoned lamb brought up on the bottle he has become a well muscled patriarch with a fine territorial instinct and a murderous temperament.

Someone comes along the road to extricate the intruder and there is a noise as of a car pulling away from somewhere down the hill to leave the night to silence…and to Monty.

Don Freddy’s son was right…someone had tried to steal the light. Might be a frustrated orgiast, might just be one of the local druggies after something to sell to feed his habit.

I await night three.

 

Election Fever and Marriage a la Mode

Election time in Costa Rica!

On Sunday people will be voting to send deputies to the National Assembly and electing a President.

There is plenty of choice…thirteen candidates….and no real way of knowing how people will vote on the day.  The polls show that an increasing number of those who intend to vote are not at all sure for whom to vote…..though there is a suspicion that those who intend to vote Liberation are afraid to say so, linked as that party is to institutionalised corruption, but will vote green and white, the party colours, once in the privacy of the booth.

Liberation’s candidate, despite being a front man for the Oscar Arias tendency – think mining concessions in protected areas – claims to be ‘a man of the people’. Well, given that his family let out offices to government institutions on the grand scale I suppose he is a man of the people who let out tower blocks…

The defeated Liberation candidate, an ex President who thought it wise to sit things out in Switzerland for several years after his term of office ended, obviously felt sour as he has been financing a noisy demagogue from a tiny party made up for the elections who wants to rule with a firm hand and is notable for announcing that female judges could only get advancement by giving senior male judges oral sex.

An indignant retort from senior female judges rebutted his claim but, as has been noted, only in respect of oral sex….no all embracing rebuttal has been forthcoming.

Then we have the evangelical whose wife speaks in tongues…the video on Facebook has been removed but not before it had gone viral…and a horde of more mainstream candidates.

No Screaming Lord Sutch for Costa Rica.

The local internet groups have been infested by paid ads from those wishing to represent local people in the National Assembly…an ex mayor proclaims that it is time for a native son to represent the canton, forgetting that people have far from fond memories of his mismanagement of its affairs when in power.

What has he done for the canton? Filled in the holes in the athletic track, apparently. So that’s where all our taxes went…

Another bright spark is using the slogan which brought the retiring President to power  – despite representing a rival party – in the hope that people will think it is more of the same….

And the omnipresent candidate for Liberation is promising water for all.

Water is a sore subject here. Thanks to dire mismanagement and neglect there is a water shortage, incredible as it may seem in an area alive with springs and rivers. So we have been treated to photographs of said candidate standing in front of waterfalls and crouching in front of water tanks…when asked on a ‘phone in exactly how he intended to provide water for all he said he would have to study the question with the Water Board, the very people responsible for the mess up….

But people here have other things on their minds…that public nuisance The Neighbour, he of the crisp white hat with the curly brim, has surfaced again.

He had been quiet, not to speak of invisible, for quite some time, given his problems with the various local Mr. Bigs  after losing their money in a casino, but he has emerged to public view once more…on the arm of a lady in her thirties who had consented to marry him.

To general astonishment as she is

A, half his age and

B, generally held to be in possession of her senses.

He had been seen a couple of times, driving round the Three Valleys in her company, but he had installed himself in her comfortable house on the other side of the town while waiting for the ceremony, following which, totally pie eyed and full of himself, he brought her on another tour to introduce her to those who were still on speaking terms with him.

A distinct failure of judgement on his part as she thus learned that the farms he had pointed out to her as being his were, in fact, those of the people whom they were visiting…

It is possible that the atmosphere had chilled somewhat after that, but The Neighbour, of course, had to excel himself.

A couple of days later he was eating the dinner she had prepared when he took a telephone call on his mobile from one of his barfly friends.

Yes, he bawled, he was set up for life now! It was like  having a free pass to a brothel with the food thrown in….

The food might have been thrown in, but The Neighbour was thrown out, on the spot, on his ear and his possessions thrown after him.

The marriage lasted five days.

The lady is breathing fire and loaded for bear.

Much more exciting than some bald bugger crouching in front of a water tank…!