Here is a very interesting post on the other ex-pat forum. I have copied it to comment because I see it as a major factor that could emmerge here--"don't like another ex-pat?--turn him in!" Sounds like dangerous waters to me and once you get involved with the police like that here, you will be suspect as well! Tattling to the Amerikan Embassy here on other ex-pats? Hmmmmm... I'm sure Hector would have something to say about this! Sounds like the ex-pats in Cuenca will soon have their own police force! Not my cup of tea!
These people here have their own way of justice and I personally like the "Indian way." If an Indian community finds someone up there, trying to steal cattle, or another man's wife, they will hold him for a few days, and beat him with stinging nettles (ouch!), and other possibly worse 'castigos.' The Police do not get involved in indigenous justice. Down around Riobamba, Indians have burned (at the stake!) thieves who have come into their areas to rob and pillage. That is the only way sometimes here. The Indians can pull this off, ex-pats can't! I remember some years ago there was a dispute with the 'savage' indians up on Lago San Pablo, some police went up, and the Indians kidnapped two cops for a number of days until the Indians got really drunk and the cops could escape. This was told to us first-hand by one of the cops.
What are peoples' opinions on this "gringo-justice"?
From: Cuenca Ecuador
Subject: [ecuador_expats] Report fraud, crime by U.S. citizens to U.S. Embassy
To: "Expats"
Date: Thursday, June 24, 2010, 6:35 AM
I had a telephone meeting with a U.S. Embassy rep yesterday and we discussed this subject of undesirables from the U.S. and other countries, infiltrating our peaceful expat midst. We indeed can help keep our midst clean by contacting the U.S. Embassy fraud unit online at their website. They will in turn give your information to the appropriate arm of enforcement. Be it known the US Embassy just gave 1.7 million USD to Ecuador's antinarcotic enforcement and works in concert with them to nail trafficers both Ecuadorian and U.S. citizens trafficing contraband.
To enter the fraud unit of the U.S. Embassy in Quito, please point your browser to
http://ecuador. usembassy. gov/visas/ fraud-prevention -unit.html
There you can find contact data to discretely and privately report any U.S. citizen engaging in any sort of criminal activity such as illicit drug sales, scams and pyramid schemes, illegal sorts of por*****phy, underaged sex and other sex crimes, smuggling of humans (wet backing) or even terrorist activity engaged in by a U.S. citizen. I'm not saying for you to horn in on private affairs of U.S. citizens here, I am saying to consider helping to keep our midst clean of obvious, blatent and flagrant crime so we all may be respected as a group. The rep said that Embassy enforcement personnel work closely with Ecuadorian National Police and have an extremely close relationship to them as far as coworking and information sharing. First offense for selling drugs here by the way is 14 years max sentence in prison. Ecuadorian prisons are horrible. Go figger. Then after a criminal's sentence is satisfied here the criminal will be tried also in US.A.and have to serve an additional sentence there too. Needless to say a criminal's passport privileges are revoked and they can't travel out of homeland boundries.
So far in my years here in Ecuador I've run into swindlers, mooches (run up hotel and restaurant tabs and obtain small ten dollar or twenty dollar loans from a lot of people and not pay anything off), con men, drug trafficers, coyotes (human trafficers) and counterfeiters, all of whom were immigrants, mostly from USA, or using tourist visas or even have no visa themselves to propogate crime..they themselves therefore were .illegals in the first place. Now we can report this scum to the proper authorities using the above link.The rep told me to say here that correct names, photos taken with cellphones or cameras, contact data, places frequented, domicile location, height, weight, eye and hair color, features, dress mode, phone numbers and any data at all about a suspected criminal should accompany the report as well as any additional details about the suspect..
Often an Embassy such as the UK or US ones just come get a criminal and put that person on a plane back to homeland, confiscate the passport and that's that. Actually that is the best because it does not arouse the public as to an immigrant committing a crime keeping our midst less in the police and crime news section of the paper and TV. It's best just to get rid of riffraff rather than make a public scene of it. It's sort of sneaky but it works best to keep our expat community out of the improper limelight.
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