The Lake Chapala Society is providing crime victims from the foreign community with a safe place and bilingual support to make their denuncias (formal complaints).
The Jalisco Attorney General’s Office, known as the Fiscalia General del Estado or FGE, is collaborating with LCS to set up sessions on its campus each Tuesday with a bilingual lawyer from Ministerio Publico to accept the denuncias.
In addition, the FGE is asking all community members who have not filed a denuncia on a crime that has been committed against them in the past year to come to LCS and do it. The Ministerio Publico has promised to provide legal advice regarding all complaints.Members of the community who have filed a denuncia in the past year and heard nothing further about their case can attend one of the sessions and ask the Ministerio Publico for a status report.
LCS Executive Director Terry Vidal says there is “a need to build up the statistics so the FGE has clear justification for pushing for more resources Lakeside.
“If nobody reports a crime then the position of the authorities is that it did not happen,” he says.
The first session will take place Tuesday, April 1, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in LCS’s Talking Books Library. Sessions will continue at the same time each Tuesday thereafter.