Crime in Puerto Rico describes acts of

violent Violence is characterized as the use of physical force by humans to cause harm to other living beings, or property, such as pain, injury, disablement, death, damage and destruction. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines violence a ...

and non-violent crime that take place within the

Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ; abbreviated PR), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a Government of Puerto Rico, self-governing Caribbean Geography of Puerto Rico, archipelago and island organized as an Territories of the United States, unincorporated territo ...

. Among all

territories of the United States Territories of the United States are sub-national administrative divisions and dependent territory, dependent territories overseen by the federal government of the United States. The American territories differ from the U.S. states and Indi ...

, Puerto Rico has one of the highest crime rates. To combat crime, the

government of Puerto Rico The government of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, organized under the Constitution of Puerto Rico since 1952, is a republican democracy modeled after the Federal Government of the United States. Under a system of separation of powers, the ...

adopted a broad anti-crime policy referred to as the "iron fist against crime" (locally ) – or simply the "iron fist" (''mano dura''). In 1993, Governor

Pedro Rosselló Pedro Juan Rosselló González (; born April 5, 1944) is a Puerto Rican physician and politician who served as the governor of Puerto Rico from 1993 to 2001. He was President of the New Progressive Party from 1991 to 1999 and 2003 to 2008, an ...

summed up government efforts by remarking, "They have asked for war, and war they shall have. Let every criminal know: Our patience has ended". However, even after adopting the multiple anti-crime measures, violent crime stayed too high. In 2006, for instance, the island reported 736 murders. In the early twenty-first century

police corruption Police corruption is a form of police misconduct in which a law enforcement officer breaks their political contract and abuses their power for personal gain. A corrupt officer may act alone or as part of a group. Corrupt acts include taking ...

facilitated drug related crimes; it resulted in the arrest of over thirty Puerto Rico law enforcement agents. It came at a time when Puerto Rico ranked sixth worldwide in murders per capita. To counteract, federal law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Coast Guard and the

Drug Enforcement Administration The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is a Federal law enforcement in the United States, United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice tasked with combating illicit Illegal drug trade, drug trafficking a ...

(DEA), coordinated efforts with the

Puerto Rico Police Department The Puerto Rico Police (PPR; , ), officially the Puerto Rico Police Bureau (, ), is a law enforcement agency with jurisdiction over the entire Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It is a division of the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety (PR DPS), ...

(PRPD) and other local agencies. The increased law enforcement efforts and tactics and equipment used led to popular criticism about a fundamental militarization of the police in the island.

Crimes by decade

Crime before the 1980s

Antonio Correa Cotto was a notorious 1950s Puerto Rican criminal. On January 25, 1950, he murdered two people in

Machuelo Abajo Machuelo Abajo is one of the 31 barrios of the municipality of Ponce, Puerto Rico. Along with Canas Urbano, Magueyes Urbano, Portugués Urbano, and San Antón, Machuelo Abajo is one of the municipality's five originally rural barrios that ar ...

Ponce, Puerto Rico Ponce ( , , ) is a city and a Municipalities of Puerto Rico, municipality on the southern coast of Puerto Rico. The most populated city outside the San Juan, Puerto Rico, San Juan metropolitan area, Ponce was founded on August 12, 1692Some publ ...

. After being caught, prosecuted and sentenced to prison, he managed to escape and returned to Ponce where he killed 10 more people.''Personajes Notorios: Correa Coto.''
LinktoPR.com (Hatillo, Puerto Rico.) 26 May 2006. Correa Coto was killed shortly after in a shootout with police. At least one significant robbery also took place after the 1950s ended. More recently, the

Government of Puerto Rico The government of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, organized under the Constitution of Puerto Rico since 1952, is a republican democracy modeled after the Federal Government of the United States. Under a system of separation of powers, the ...

has combated the illegal drug trade and the resulting crime since the mid-1970s, with increasing law enforcement efforts over multiple decades contributing to a

cycle of violence The term cycle of violence refers to repeated and dangerous acts of violence as a cyclical pattern, Though

recreational drug use Recreational drug use is the use of one or more psychoactive drugs to induce an altered state of consciousness, either for pleasure or for some other casual purpose or pastime. When a psychoactive drug enters the user's body, it induces an Sub ...

was uncommon in Puerto Rico in the 1950s, it markedly increased in the 1960s. By the following decade, said increase in usage, particularly among those under the age of 25, became a major concern in Puerto Rican society. Estimates found that up to seventy thousand islanders were substance abusers. A number of drug cartels discovered that Puerto Rico functioned as an efficient transfer point while trafficking contraband such as

cocaine Cocaine is a tropane alkaloid and central nervous system stimulant, derived primarily from the leaves of two South American coca plants, ''Erythroxylum coca'' and ''Erythroxylum novogranatense, E. novogranatense'', which are cultivated a ...

to the mainland United States, and has been a magnet for

organized crime Organized crime is a category of transnational organized crime, transnational, national, or local group of centralized enterprises run to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally thought of as a f ...

for several decades. A major focus on crime and, specifically, drug-related problems arose in Puerto Rican politics out of those events. A 1975 survey found that 87% of respondents believed that violence had recently increased to a serious extent. Beside mentioning "

vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, Habit (psychology), habit or item generally considered morally wrong in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character trait, a defect, an infirmity, or a bad or unhe ...

", however,

inflation In economics, inflation is an increase in the average price of goods and services in terms of money. This increase is measured using a price index, typically a consumer price index (CPI). When the general price level rises, each unit of curre ...

and lack of

employment Employment is a relationship between two party (law), parties Regulation, regulating the provision of paid Labour (human activity), labour services. Usually based on a employment contract, contract, one party, the employer, which might be a cor ...

attracted notice as causes of Puerto Rican crime as well.

Crime in the 1980s

The existence of apparent ' no man's land' areas, in which all manner of criminal activity could take place without any sort of police control, among particularly lower-class communities caused widespread concern. The use of

automatic weapons An automatic firearm or fully automatic firearm (to avoid confusion with semi-automatic firearms) is a self-loading firearm that continuously chambers and fires rounds when the trigger mechanism is actuated. The action of an automatic firearm ...

and other arms to directly fight back against law enforcement became a particular problem as well. From 1993 to 1996, the government confiscated a total of 10,017 illegal firearms during their efforts. As well, the total number of murders in Puerto Rico nearly doubled from 1987 to 1994— increasing from 509 to 995, respectively. These trends received massive interest in the island's

news media The news media or news industry are forms of mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public. These include News agency, news agencies, newspapers, news magazines, News broadcasting, news channels etc. History Some of the fir ...

Crime in the 1990s

Perceptions about widespread crime triggered political turmoil and sustained pressure for the authorities to change their approaches, often involving a doubling-down of anti-drug crackdowns. In the early 1990s, notably, law enforcement began specifically targeting

white collar White collar may refer to: * White-collar worker, a professional who performs office-based or similar service-based jobs, as opposed to a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor * White-collar boxing * White-collar crime The term ...

drug users. A government chief of staff remarked that the police had witnessed "housewives who go to these rug distributionspots with their children in the car" and vowed to send a strong message. The broad, strict approach of the island's government has been known as the "iron fist" ( or simply ''mano dura''). In 1993, Governor

summed up government efforts by remarking, "They have asked us for war and war is what they will get. Let the criminal know: our pateince has run out." (). During the first month of that year alone, a total of 104 murders took place. Specific changes in the anti-crime efforts have included assigning police officers with more weapons and targeted intervention of the National Guard in certain places. However, Puerto Rican efforts generally proved inadequate in stopping widespread drug trafficking in the latter part of the 20th century. The government had not just expanded employment levels and general funding for jailing and policing but also undergone a kind of

militarization Militarization, or militarisation, is the process by which a society organizes itself for military conflict and violence. It is related to militarism, which is an ideology that reflects the level of militarization of a state. The process of mil ...

in its organization. Specific strategies included longer sentences for criminals, increased funding for officer equipment, and the construction of new prisons. From 1992 to 1998, the island's budget for policing approximately doubled. Yet progress remained mostly elusive. Public opinion viewed the island's law enforcement situation in critical terms. In 1997, a major national poll found that a 68% majority believed that crime had gotten "much worse" over the previous five years. In response to pervasive crime, local law enforcement attempted to integrate their efforts with U.S. federal agencies, especially with fighting trafficking in mind. The U.S. Coast Guard and

(DEA) both reinforced their presence on the island during the 1990s, setting up connections that remained years later. Nonetheless, challenges such as

have frequently complicated matters as different groups attempt to work with each other. The

(PRPD), the territory's primary law enforcement agency, has been tarnished by multiple scandals over officer misconduct up to and including outright criminal activity.

Crime in the 2000s

One of the biggest law enforcement corruption busts in U.S. history took place in 2001 on the island. Twenty-nine police officers were caught on videotape drug trafficking thanks to an

undercover operation A covert operation or undercover operation is a military or police operation involving a covert agent or troops acting under an assumed cover to conceal the identity of the party responsible. US law Under US law, the Central Intelligence Ag ...

initiated by the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

(FBI). Coming after authorities suspected local police of direct involvement in drug dealing, some officers even being bold enough to sell

heroin Heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine and diamorphine among other names, is a morphinan opioid substance synthesized from the Opium, dried latex of the Papaver somniferum, opium poppy; it is mainly used as a recreational drug for its eupho ...

from their squad cars, the bust additionally aimed to stop the illicit protection provided to certain cocaine dealers who shipped their contraband throughout the island. Known as Operation Lost Honor, a total of thirty-two individuals were arrested in the case. ''

Orlando Sentinel The ''Orlando Sentinel'' is the primary newspaper of Orlando, Florida, and the Central Florida region, in the United States. It was founded in 1876 and is currently owned by Tribune Publishing Company. The ''Orlando Sentinel'' is owned by pare ...

'' journalist Ivan Roman stated that the bust "stunned a department already reeling from a series of" previous scandals. As well, four Puerto Rican officers were arrested in 2008 by the FBI, including the director of the island's Extradition Division, for

extortion Extortion is the practice of obtaining benefit (e.g., money or goods) through coercion. In most jurisdictions it is likely to constitute a criminal offence. Robbery is the simplest and most common form of extortion, although making unfounded ...

as well as the distribution of both

and heroin. The EFE World News Service stated in a report that the arrested "took advantage of the authority of their uniforms". Between 1993 and 2000, the PRPD kicked out a full one thousand officers due to a variety of criminal charges. Between 2003 and 2007, a hundred officers had been under investigation, with seventy-five others convicted under the jurisdiction of the U.S. federal court system. Then

Police Superintendent Superintendent (Supt) is a rank in the British police and in most English-speaking Commonwealth nations. In many Commonwealth countries, the full version is superintendent of police (SP). The rank is also used in most British Overseas Territori ...

Pedro Toledo said in 2007, "We have had officers using police cars to escort drug dealers, and we have arrested officers selling weapons to undercover agents". He stressed that many officers did their best even while some had chosen to "violate their oath". The previous year, the violent death of trafficking kingpin Jose "Coquito" Lopez Rosario had spawned an investigation into the upper levels of the territory's government. The late kingpin's ties to three local senators extended to the point that one of the officials had brought him along during prison inspections.

Crime in the 2010s

The massive bust on Puerto Rican soil as a result of Operation Guard Shack generated international media coverage, with publications such as the American

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

and the British ''

Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was foun ...

'' reporting on it. The culmination of a two-year FBI investigation into law enforcement corruption in the territory, the operation came to a head on October 6, 2010, with a series of pre-dawn raids. These led to over a hundred arrests, with those taken in including members of the PRPD, the Puerto Rico Corrections Department (PRCD), and even

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of the United Stat ...

soldiers. The corrupt individuals had gone beyond providing security for drug traffickers to actively taking part in the deals. Officials charged a total of 133 individuals in the operation. The operation began at 3 a.m. as sixty-five tactical groups spread across the territory, with Hostage Rescue Teams (HRT) and Special Weapons and Tactics Teams (SWAT) making the surprise arrests. Over one thousand agents of the FBI, many of them flown into the island secretly, conducted the massive raid. The organization labeled the operation as "likely the largest police corruption case in the FBI's history." "The people of Puerto Rico deserve better," stated then

U.S. Attorney General The United States attorney general is the head of the United States Department of Justice and serves as the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government. The attorney general acts as the principal legal advisor to the president of the ...

Eric Holder Eric Himpton Holder Jr. (born January 21, 1951) is an American lawyer who served as the 82nd United States attorney general from 2009 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Holder was the first African Ameri ...

. Causes of police corruption include the relatively low

wage A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work (human activity), work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include wiktionary:compensatory, compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', ''prevailin ...

s paid to regular officers. Then Police Association President Jose Rodriguez reported in 2007 that Puerto Ricans patrolling the streets made about twenty-six thousand dollars a year. Rodriguez additionally pointed out how local sergeants supervised thirty to thirty-five officers— in contrast to the average of ten in the continental U.S. Puerto Rico's murder rate dropped somewhat from the 1990s into the 2000s, yet violent crime remained significantly higher not just at a regional but also on an international scale. In the mid-2000s, the territory's troubles ranked it sixth worldwide in murders per capita. In 2006, a total of 736 individuals were murdered in Puerto Rico. In terms of the 2010s, the

cycle of violence The term cycle of violence refers to repeated and dangerous acts of violence as a cyclical pattern, A 2011 report by the

Civil Rights Division The Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice enforces federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, religion, and national origin. The division was established on December 9, 1957, b ...

of the

U.S. Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the U.S. government that oversees the domestic enforcement of federal laws and the administration of justice. It is equi ...

into the Puerto Rican police concluded that the department was "broken in a number of critical and fundamental respects". While stating that many "hard working and dedicated" officers "serve the public with distinction under often challenging conditions", the investigators declared that the violations "uncovered are pervasive and plague all levels of" the department. At the conclusion of that year, Puerto Rico's experienced a spike in violent crime, with over a thousand people having been killed. The Puerto Rican debt crisis of the mid-2010s has challenged the territory's civil society and resulted in hundreds of thousands of residents becoming unemployed. A subsequent wave of migration to the mainland from the island took place as well. A U.S. federal oversight board agreed to supervise the local government's financial administration in 2016, with some $74 billion of debt on the line. A ''

Miami Herald The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by McClatchy, The McClatchy Company and headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Founded in 1903, it is the fifth-largest newspaper in Florida, serving Miami-Dade, Broward County, Fl ...

'' article from 2017 stated that the crisis has left Puerto Rican "institutions in shambles". During a weekend in December 2018, there were seven killings. The extent to which such violence will cycle as the rebuilding takes place remains uncertain. Police Superintendent Hector Pesquera remarked in 2017 that Puerto Rico's crime problem had been mostly "out of sight, out of mind" to mainland Americans before the

hurricane A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system with a low-pressure area, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Depending on its ...

and no longer was. Nonetheless, individuals such as former Police Superintendent Miguel Pereira have observed that the large

profit margins Profit margin is a financial ratio that measures the percentage of profit earned by a company in relation to its revenue. Expressed as a percentage, it indicates how much profit the company makes for every dollar of revenue generated. Profit margi ...

associated with illegal drugs in Puerto Rico, the high demand being driven by multiple social problems, will foster criminal acts no matter what law enforcement tries to do. Pereira provided a specific example in 2013 with how cocaine sold for about $15,000 a

kilo Kilo may refer to: *kilo- (k-), a metric prefix denoting a factor of 103 *Kilogram (kg), a metric unit of mass Music *Kilo, a funk/R&B band from Bloomington/Indianapolis/Indiana *KILO, a Colorado radio station *''El Kilo'', a 2005 album by th ...

on Puerto Rican streets while wholesale producer in areas of

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

produced the substance for only $400 per kilo or so. Thus, Pereira publicly lamented, criminals could even lose a full 90% of their supply through anti-drug efforts and still receive significant returns; for instance, a mobster cleaned out of all but 100 of his initial 1,000 kilos could still manage to become a millionaire from those leftovers alone.

Crime in the 2020s

There were 529 homicides in 2020 and 614 in 2019. Illegal drugs are routed from

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

and the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. It shares a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Puerto Rico to the east and ...

, continue through Puerto Rico and on to

Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the List of municipalities in New Jersey, most populous City (New Jersey), city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, the county seat of Essex County, New Jersey, Essex County, and a principal city of the New York metropolitan area. ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

and

Orlando, Florida Orlando ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Orange County, Florida, United States. The city proper had a population of 307,573 at the 2020 census, making it the fourth-most populous city in Florida behind Jacksonville, Florida, Jacksonville ...

. Multiple law enforcement agencies have worked to arrest members of drug gangs. is a violent gang that operates in Aguas Buenas, Cidra, Juncos, Cayey, San Lorenzo and other municipalities. That gang's members kill and dismember victims after assassination and are led by Nelson Torres Delgado, (aka: ), who was arrested in 2019, and was arrested again in October 2024.

Debates and discussions

Commentators that have questioned the effectiveness of government anti-crime policy altogether include Gary Gutierrez, a

criminal justice Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the rehabilitation of offenders, preventing other ...

professor at the

University of Turabo A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

, and

Jorge Rodriguez Beruff Dr. Jorge Rodriguez Beruff (born May 1, 1947) is a Puerto Rican historian who served as Dean of the College of General Studies of the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR). He previously chaired the Social Sciences Departmen ...

, an academic and historian associated with the

University of Puerto Rico The University of Puerto Rico (Spanish language, Spanish: ''Universidad de Puerto Rico;'' often shortened to UPR) is the main List of state and territorial universities in the United States, public university system in the Commonwealth (U.S. i ...

(UPR). In 2013, the former secretary of the

Puerto Rico Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation The Puerto Rico Department of Correction and Rehabilitation () is the law enforcement executive department of the government responsible for structuring, developing, and coordinating the public policies in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territo ...

Zoé Laboy Zoé Laboy Alvarado (born September 17, 1964) is an American attorney and public servant. Laboy served as Secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation from 1997 to 2000. in 2016 she was elected to become a senator with the New ...

remarked publicly that "in general terms we have failed" () while arguing that some initiatives had resulted in good outcomes. In the aftermath of 2017's

Hurricane Maria Hurricane Maria was an extremely powerful and devastating tropical cyclone that affected the northeastern Caribbean in September 2017, particularly in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, which accounted for 2,975 of the 3,059 deaths. It is the ...

, ''

'' journalist David Ovalle wrote,

Crime against women

Domestic violence Domestic violence is violence that occurs in a domestic setting, such as in a marriage Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognised union between people called spouses. It establishes r ...

was criminalized in Puerto Rico under Law 54 of 1989. The law includes a rehabilitation program as an alternative to prison for convicted offenders but according to the ''Centro de Periodismo Investigativo'' (Center of Investigative Reporting) this program lacks supervision, which undermines its credibility. From 2009 to 2021 at least 196 women on the island were killed in acts of gender-based violence according to the ''Oficina de la Procuradora de la Mujer'' (Office of the Woman's Rights Advocate) of the government of Puerto Rico. On January 26, 2021, governor

Pedro Pierluisi Pedro Rafael Pierluisi Urrutia (born April 26, 1959) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the Governor of Puerto Rico from 2021 to 2025, having previously been the de facto governor from August 2–7, 2019. A member of New P ...

declared a state of emergency after several women were murdered. The epidemic of violence against women in Puerto Rico reached a high when in two unrelated cases women were murdered at the end of April, 2021. According to the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

Félix Verdejo murdered Keishla Rodríguez Ortiz, his pregnant lover, on April 30, 2021. The 27-year-old was punched, injected with drugs, tied to heavy stones, thrown over a bridge into a river and then shot at. The other murder victim, Andrea C. Ruiz Costas, had requested a restraining order against her violent partner but had been denied. These murders attracted large media and public attention which increased demands from women seeking assistance in cases of gender based violence. On May 5 the

Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico (FOMBPR), colloquially known as ''La Junta de Control/Supervisión Fiscal'' is a government entity whose role to revise and approve the budget and obligations of the government of Puerto R ...

which is managing Puerto Rico's debt crisis approved $7 million in funding after initially rejecting this amount. The money was approved so that the Puerto Rico police can address the epidemic of gender violence. On August 27, 2021, governor

signed into law a measure that turned

femicide Femicide or feminicide is the intentional murder of women or girls because of their gender.Shalva Weil, "Femicide Across Europe: Research and prevention of femicide across Europe". Research Gate, October 2018. In domestic fields, 50% percent o ...

s and transfemicides into separate categories of crimes. The new law designated these crimes as first degree murders and as a result raised the punishment for committing them to a maximum of 99 years.

In popular culture

* Crime in Puerto Rico is featured in a film and accompanying

soundtrack A soundtrack is a recorded audio signal accompanying and synchronised to the images of a book, drama, motion picture, radio program, television show, television program, or video game; colloquially, a commercially released soundtrack album of m ...

Daddy Yankee Ramón Luis Ayala Rodríguez (; born February 3, 1976), known professionally as Daddy Yankee (), is a Puerto Rican rapper, singer, songwriter, and actor who rose to worldwide prominence in 2004 with the song "Gasolina". Dubbed the "Honorific ...

called . * , a salsa song by

Willie Colón William Anthony Colón Román (born April 28, 1950) is a Puerto Rican and American Salsa musician and social activist. He began his career as a trombonist but also sings, writes, produces and acts. Colón was a pioneer of Salsa music and a be ...

and

Héctor Lavoe Héctor Juan Pérez Martínez (September 30, 1946 – June 29, 1993), better known as Héctor Lavoe, was a Puerto Rican people, Puerto Rican salsa music, salsa singer. Widely regarded as one of salsa’s most important and influential vocalist ...

, is about crime in Puerto Rico. (Calle Luna and Calle Sol are streets in San Juan, Puerto Rico and also in Ponce, Puerto Rico.)

References

External links

United States Attorney's Office - District of Puerto Rico

Incident Statistics Tool
{{Americas topic, Crime in