Tijuana has recorded more than 2,000 homicides this year as the city's gun violence crisis continues to rise dramatically.
With just a couple of days left of the year, the state of Baja California has registered nearly 2,500 killings, making it the second deadliest state in Mexico, after Guanajuato, where over 2,984 homicides have been recorded so far in 2022.
It's a recent record everyone saw coming and no one was able to stop. And it has scraped scars into the psyche of the residents of the border city.
“These are fights between cartels, everyone is fighting to control the area and this is why we have had so many murders,” Ernesto, a resident of Tijuana, told NBC7's sister station Telemundo 20 in an interview.
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According to city officials, the 2,000th homicide was recorded Late Wednesday, when authorities uncovered a clandestine grave with at least eleven bodies near Tijuana's border with Playas de Rosarito.
Among the 2,000 death this year, over 200 have been women, officials said.
"This will probably going to be the most violent year in Tijuana's history," local commissioner Roberto Quijano said. "We have to keep this administration accountable on this issue, what we are experiencing is a very tragic 2022," he added.
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As of Thursday morning, the homicide count for the month of December in Tijuana was at 112, which includes the six bodies found inside an abandoned van parked outside a Tijuana Shopping Center Monday morning.
The harrowing figure comes as local officials scramble to increase the police force in the city, which some claim is too small for a metropolitan area like Tijuana.
"On several occasions, the mayor has acknowledged that 1,700 police officers do not have enough manpower for a city like Tijuana …. we need 420 more on our streets," Quijano claimed. "We have also asked the army for help."
City leaders hope to hire over 200 additional officers in the fiscal year 2022.
"We need to double the number of officers we have to meet our city's needs,” Fernando Sánchez, Tijuana's Security Secretary told Telemundo 20.
