Volunteers Needed | Policing In Mexico

Volunteers Needed

The Narco Killings Mapping Project is currently canvassing for volunteers to help monitor local papers in Mexico for deaths in relation to homicides, executions and mass graves that can be plotted on the Narco Killings mapping project (https://sites.google.com/site/policereform/narco-killings).

The Narco Killings Mapping Project has been in operation since May 2010 and is used by the media, academics, and the public to monitor the devastation of the war on drugs. Although very successful, the challenge we face now is to comprehensively track ALL the people who are killed each day all over Mexico.

We know from government reports that there is an average of 59 individuals killed each and every day but due to time constraints that prevent us from monitoring local media in all 32 states of Mexico we find that we are only able to map an average of 40 per day. This gap must be addressed as part of the path to bringing transparency, accountability and justice to Mexico. 

This is an important task because the numbers of people killed are not being accurately tracked, and for those agencies that do collect statistics (including the government, media and other institutions), the numbers tracked vary between agencies, are glossed over and/or not being revealed to the general public in a timely matter [1]. If a national and international  media misses or glosses over these important numbers, what else is missing and how can we know what is truly happening? 

The Task

The work is not difficult and all that is needed is a computer, internet access and 1 to 2 hours a day (all training will be provided by the Narco Killings Mapping Project).

Each volunteer is assigned ownership for a State(s) of which he or she is responsible for scanning local media: online news, Twitter, Facebook etc (these links will be provided). Each day the volunteer is required to submit information, compiled in the form of: date, location, number of deaths, one line summary of event and corresponding link to the source of the report.

A basic knowledge of Spanish is helpful but not required.

For more information or to apply please send an email to: policiareforma@gmail.com

[1] A recent example is the Milenio Newspaper media group which recently published statistics on the executions for August 2011 (Conteo de las ejecuciones en el país en lo que va del año (gráfico interactivo)) and stated that none occurred in Colima and only 3 in Guanajuato, whereas the Narco Killings Mapping Project directly contradicts this with the mapping of 3 killings in Colima and18 for Guanajuato for the month of August 2011, and includes the media links to each event, for all to see and check for veracity.