Map of Tijuana traffic accidents, 1999

"My patient is Tijuana," says Dr. José Rubio Soto. "My hospital is city hall. These are the X-rays." He's peering at a computer screen filled with blobs. It's a map of the city. Tijuana looks as if it has the measles, especially near the border.

Dr. José Rubio Soto

"This is a map of the traffic accidents in Tijuana last year," he says. "I am looking at it from a doctor's point of view. Surveillance of risk factors."

Perhaps more important, what he's looking at is the progenitor for another map: A "crime map" of the city, showing in detail where crimes take place, with "pop-up" facts in each instance about aggressor, victim, and circumstance.

With 62 murders in its first six weeks of 2000, Tijuana needs some Rx. (San Diego only had 58 murders for the whole of last year.) But Dr. Rubio is no first-aid man. His fixes are aimed at the long term. In his practice of studying violence, he's attempting to build a multilayered picture of the city and its problems.

In the last two months, what appear to be gangland executions have been carried out in three Tijuana locations: Mesa de Otay (16 killings), La Mesa (14 killings), and the Zona Centro — downtown Tijuana — (11 killings).

To San Diegans, even raw information like this can be useful — to know where not to go late at night or which roads require caution. To Dr. Rubio, the city's epidemiologist, and to his main backer, city councillor Renato Sandoval Franco, mapping violence is an effort to get authorities beyond a case-by-case reaction to shootings and collisions. Rubio wants to get to the roots of Tijuana's escalating crime and traffic accidents -- the two most dangerous elements of Tijuana life.

With so many murders notched up this year, it may seem curious that Dr. Rubio worries more about the city's fatal-traffic-accident rate (last year's figure was 110, compared with San Diego's 79) than the murder rate. Yet due to the defined roles of city, state, and federal police, Sandoval and Rubio walk a fine line when it comes to applying their statistical analyses efforts to crime.

"We haven't started [building crime maps] because it's very delicate, how we want to handle this," says Sandoval. "The municipal [city] police function is prevention. Crime investigation is state police responsibility. And the investigation of drug-related crimes is in the hands of the federal police."

In the meantime, Rubio concentrates on analyzing traffic accidents, a factor within the city's purview that needs attention. Rubio believes Tijuanans display an "attitude problem" toward obeying traffic laws in their own city. For instance, he notes, as they're about to enter the U.S., Tijuana drivers often strap on their seat belts and drive carefully. When they're coming back, however, they unbuckle, relax, revive their macho image, and speed up.

The city police's recent "Zero Tolerance" blitz has made a dent in this "attitude," according to Sandoval, lowering the accident rate by 25 percent in two weeks. "That's 111 fewer accidents. In those 111 accidents, if we save one life, the program is already working."

But Rubio approaches the problem differently. "I look at the problem like a doctor. I see the problem of the city like a disease. We have in city hall a lot of medication, like social work, like public works; that is my medicine."

He talks as he walks around his cramped offices on the second floor of Tijuana's Palacio Municipal (city hall). Assistants work around him, entering information into his database. The click, click, click of their computer keys overlays background ranchero music.

Most accidents haven't occurred on the highways -- despite the publicity of recent traffic incidents involving San Diegans -- or even at the crowded border crossings. According to Rubio's data, they've happened downtown, in the concentrated blocks around Second and Third Streets and Avenidas Constitución and Revolución. "And most -- 60 percent -- of these are rear-end collisions," he adds.

His data also show that some of the worst accidents happen near the border fence west of the crossing, where cars speed up on Avenida Internacional, heading toward the Playas de Tijuana neighborhood. Most fatalities are cars hitting would-be emigrants dashing across the road to get to the fence.

But as bad as these problems are, Rubio and Sandoval know they pale before Tijuana's rising tide of murder and crime. Which is why Sandoval is motivated to make sure Rubio's program is funded. In his city hall office, Sandoval, who is also president of Tijuana's Commission on Public Security, Traffic, and Transport, says he believes Rubio's maps could give Tijuana authorities an effective tool to regain control over the city's underworld.

"There are two ways to solve this problem," Sandoval says. "One is the old-school way, [trying to anticipate] where it is going to happen, or by tapping the experience of the old policemen. The other way is using all the technology available to us now. We made a trip to New York to see their problems. We also went to Washington to talk to the people from the Pan American Health Organization, to see how they work these programs with the computer.

"We first realized this program could help us when we did a study of why people don't get medical help in [city-run health] offices. When [Rubio's staff] looked at why people didn't follow through on treatment they knew they needed, they found out the health centers were too far from their homes. That was the first time we realized this map can help us resolve problems we have in the city.

"Dr. Rubio is working on creating surveillance data -- maps on common crime, not on homicides. In Tijuana, homicides get all the publicity. But 90 percent of homicides are [drug mafia]-related, and that's one problem that the federal government has to attack. But the [bigger] problem for the city is when they steal your stereo, when they steal your clothes in the neighborhood, when they assault people at their work and take their money. What we have to work [against] in Tijuana is the crime that is hurting the people the most.

"We have offered all this technology and programs to the state [police]. We have held two or three meetings with them. First they are amazed that we have all these statistics. And they're very willing to work with us, give us facilities to get more information so we can give them feedback. This is a win-win situation for everyone. Everybody lowers their crime rates, and the city, the people will benefit."

Rubio's ideas and inspiration originated with a female doctor in Cali, the city whose name is more famous for the cartel named after it. Along with Medellín, Cali is one of the most violent cities on earth. But this is where, since 1993, Dr. Victoria Espitia has been systematically examining what she calls the "epidemiology of violence."

"I met her at a conference in El Paso, and I realized how important this could be for Mexico," says Rubio Soto. "Her method provides not just a map, but an X-ray of the city, its problems, and the multitude of causes that contribute to the situation."

It was a plan born of desperation. "We had to do something," says Espitia by phone from Cali. "When we began [in 1993], we had 1833 murders in that one year. That was just in Cali." (At the time, the city was slightly bigger than Tijuana, with 1.8 million inhabitants.) "In 1994 we had 2061 homicides," she continues. "Our country has the highest rate of homicide in Latin America." By chance, in 1993, Cali elected an epidemiologist, Dr. Rodrigo Guerrero, to be its mayor. He ordered Espitia, also an epidemiologist (doctors who study medical trends by use of statistics), to establish a database of murders, fatal accidents, and suicides in the city. Cali became the first city in Latin America to methodically track and analyze such deaths. With good data to base decisions on, says Espitia, intelligent policy followed.

Because Espitia's data revealed a heavy correlation between alcohol, festival weekends, and murder (firearms were used in 90 percent of murders, she found), the mayor banned the carrying of handguns on holidays and instituted closing hours for liquor-dispensing businesses, thus limiting the rise in the murder rate. Because so many traffic deaths involved motorcycles, he enforced helmet-wearing and nearly halved motorcycle deaths.

Espitia has since helped create similar programs in Montevideo (Uruguay), Quito (Ecuador), and Tegucigalpa (Honduras -- where it anchors the city's new "War on Violence"). Most recently she has observed the "Cops and Docs" program in Atlanta, Georgia, part of a comparable surveillance system in the U.S.

Espitia thinks her program can work in Tijuana. "I think [a surveillance program] is very important because Tijuana is very similar to Cali; the violence is similar: narco-traffickers, drugs. The most important thing is to use all sources of data -- not just police but health, forensic authorities, district attorneys. And to share the information with the people, not to keep it locked up in government reports. Also to make sure you have your top authorities behind you."

For the next two years at least, Rubio has no worries there. Tijuana mayor Francisco Vega de la Madrid, whose term lasts until the end of 2001, solidly supports his program. And it seems local cops do too, if Javier Viruete is any indication. Viruete is chief of police for Tijuana's southern district of San Antonio de los Buenos. Today he has come into Rubio's office to be briefed on all accidents that have occurred in his area, to get profiles on perpetrators and victims, and to hear suggestions for improving his dangerous traffic spots. "This is brand new. It's great," Viruete says as he pores over masses of multicolored dots in his territory. He is one of many police chiefs coming to look at the database for the first time. "Based on this," says staffer David Limón, who has been briefing Viruete, "he will start a program of prevention."

Limón, a lawyer, is also helping create the crime maps. "[They] will be the culmination of this effort," he says.

Sandoval sounds positively idealistic when contemplating the possibilities created by Rubio's program. "We [now] know the people who are committing the crimes are [often] from another neighborhood. Let's go and work on that neighborhood so we can prevent the [continuing] crimes in the first neighborhood. We won't lower the crime rates just by using the police force. In those areas where we are having the most problems, send in other programs, like cultural programs, like sports programs...."

But Sandoval also knows a surveillance program in itself is no panacea. He has worries about the state of law enforcement itself. "When the military was [helping] the PGR [state police in Baja California], things seemed to be under control. Then, last November-December, the military departed. And when they took off from Tijuana is when these [drug-related murders] started increasing. So now only a dozen federal agents are looking after drug crimes in Tijuana.... You make your own conclusions."

Sandoval suspects Rubio's statistics will make reality harder for politicians to ignore. "If we work with the state police, we should be able to have a crime map of the city later this year. That way we can know where to focus more attention on the problem. The most important thing," he concludes, "is that we're getting results. With these maps we can see what's happening in our city. Daily. We can create a tailor-made suit for the city. If you have statistics that prove your program works, there's not a politician who can ignore that."