Expat dropped the ball - Chief Contreras

Remember when Police Chief Contreras home was bombed? An expat - lets call her jane doe - contacted me and one of the expat coordinators working with the police chief, and said she wanted to raise money for the police chief.

The expat coordinator met with the police chief, told him what the expat wanted to do - and set up and account at lloyds.

So what did the expat Jane Doe do? Wrote up a press release and emailed a few people. Guess that constituted raising money.

Today we found out that Jane Doe considered her work done. No money was raised.

So opps - Jane Doe caused expectations to be set with the police chief that the expat community did indeed want to help him.

So my question is - what should we do - and I think we should do something.

An account at lloyds was set up - Actinver/Lloyds, # 6678064, name on account: Robert Jerry Eubanks - so you can go into Lloyds to make a donation - and no donation is too small.

Does any one else have any other ideas on how we can remove the egg of the face of the expat community. I think Chief Contreras has gone out of his way to be available to the expat community.

Is anyone willing to help? $30,000 pesos is a lot - if we could just raise $15.000 - at least it would look like we care. At 100 pesos each, that is only 150 people that have to chip in.

Anyone have any ideas? I am even willing to stand out front of superlake with a tin can - as I think this is a slap in the face to Chief Contreras if we say, well, after all, no one was interested in helping - to include the person that wanted to raise money.

I'll help out with a donation.

How can one do that from Stateside?

uj

If you have been following the other post on "Giving Back to the Community" then you know Monarch Hosting would be more than willing to help with a spot for a website for this cause. In this situation a domain name and a long term hosting plan is just not needed. What we could offer is a website that is actually a sub domain of another that we already own. The site would be www.[PICKaNAME].lagunachapala.com In addition to this any number of email addresses are possible in the form of [YourChoice]@laguanachapala.com

This is something that to be of a benefit should be up and running ASAP and that is where we have a problem. At present Ellen just doesn't have time to do any design work and this won't be changing for the immediate future. She is up to her neck in a 75 page interactive site for a local B&B with a design review presentation over the weekend. If you or anyone reading this is able and willing to help with the website design please let me know and I'll have something set up for you. albert@monarchhostingservices.com It's probably a good idea to include a phone number so that the first part can be done on the phone all in one call, followed up with a return email with needed information and confirmation.

I have an email out to a gentleman who has just finished experimenting with PayPal donations via a website being tied to Lloyds. Now that they are a bank it may well be possible to tie into them via a routing number. If someone doesn't mind designing a site I should have more information on this by tomorrow.

Hopefully we can be of help,

Albert
www.monarchhostingservices.com

Thanks for the offer for a website spot! I will take you up on it - and sent you a message with my contact information.

and uncle jack - thanks for your offer - we will get something going so you can make a donation using paypal - hopefully others will want to do so also.

It is going to take a few days to get paypal set up (I not only walk slower in my older age, I think slower too!!!) - and will let you know when!!!

I will also donate but don't have enough time left here to assist in collections. I'll leave my donation with RB.

Check your email at lakesidecrime.

Albert - Thanks for your offer for the website spot - but figured out how to do it on LakesideCrime.

And thank all of you who have offered to Donate.

If you would like to use paypal, I have set up a paypal account for this purpose. Paypal will accept credit cards and checks - and no donation will be too small.

Just click this link to donate - http://lakesidecrime.com/donate

Uncle Jack wrote:How can one do that from Stateside?

uj

Here is the Paypal Link! Thank you for your offer to make a donation - it is appreciated - I have set up a US paypal account for this purpose: http://lakesidecrime.com/donate

I got the ball rolling with a $50 USD donation. It's not much but if we can get enough people to give a little bit each it will add up quickly. Thanks for putting this together. Please keep us updated on how this is going.

If you want to donate from the US you can make a deposit into my B of A account and I can take out in pesos here and deposit at the bank.

I did my donation through the Paypal link above. It came off my charge card. Worked like a charm. I received a confirmation e-mail from Paypal with all the deposit details.

Intercasa wrote:If you want to donate from the US you can make a deposit into my B of A account and I can take out in pesos here and deposit at the bank.

Thanks for the offer Intercasa. I set up a paypal account last night just for this purpose - and it seems to be working fine. Everyone gets a receipt from paypal - and when we close it off, I will just turn over the receipts/records or donations and a check to be deposited in Lloyds to the expat liaison - The chief does not want to know who made donations - so he isn't accused of favoritism.

So far we are up to $250 US - hopefully we can raise at least $1000 US - preferably a little more - at least enough to say the expat community really does care.

Do we know who has access to this account at Lloyd? Any check and balance like two signatures needed to withdraw money. It seems a little strange that there is no money in the account, but I have not seen any promotion of this anywhere. I like to know who has control of the money before I donate.

I can help promote this but would like a little more information. I search the archives at TOB to see if there is anything I can write up for promo.

I did email you the information. The person whose name is on the account has posted on Chapala.com - so you can read about who he is. Sorry - but I don't think I should copy that posting. He will be the one to give the check to the police chief

I am also happy to provide the name of the expat liaison to the police - just pm me for that info.

I do think there are enough checks and balances here - to ensure that the money that is donated gets to the intended recipient.

Here is the info about the original grenade attack using google translate:

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/737681.html

(jan 16)
Last night, minutes before 20:00 pm, police reported that the house Chapala's public safety director this county, Reynol Contreras Muñoz, was attacked with grenades and gunfire. The fact there was only material damage.

After the attack, state police managed to arrest 10 people who were assured at least 20 rifles, grenades, a rocket launcher, guns of different calibers and tactical equipment.

Those arrested were Samuel Aguirre Chavez, 21...............cut

The group confessed to being part of a cell of the criminal organization called "resistance" that resulted from the fracture of the Valencia cartel in Jalisco for over a year.
..............
Hope this helps

I am having some difficulty understanding why the "expat community" is raising money, albeit, a rather small sum of money, to pay for renovations to the home of the Chapala police chief. I´m not disputing the worthiness of the cause but, as I have been out of Lakeside and living in Chiapas for the past several months, I don´t understand why this crusade, as worthy as it may be, has been undertaken.

Edited as my inquiry has been addressed. My thanks to the responder.

Hound Dog - you raise good points.

The reason that I am trying to raise money is because another expat decided she wanted to raise money for this - and, from my perspective, dropped the ball - but not until after she created the situation where the expectations of the city and the police chief were raised - so that they expected the expats to do something.

So the expat liaison asked if I could help - as she just found out this week that no money was raised. As it seems to reflect badly on the community if we screwed up - I stepped in.

And I would never have volunteered to do this. But when she dropped the ball, I didn't like the options - and felt it reflected badly against the community.

Hope this helps understand - I don't disagree with anything you said.

Lakesidecrime,

That's enough information for me. Do you want me to post on other web boards? And maybe an article for the various local newspapers.

A further answer to Dawg, if my memory is correct, this Police Chief Contreras was speaking to a group of NOBs at St. Andrew's church around the time the granading of his house occurred. He was addressing drug gang and security concerns of the expat population at that time. May even have been the same day. So I don't believe it is just any officer of the law who gets bombed or attacked, but one that was trying to help the expat community.

Lakesidecrime, please correct me if I am wrong.

The police chief's house was attacked the evening of January 15. On the afternoon of January 17, he appeared at San Andrews church to talk about the Alan Turnipseed murder. At the meeting, he said among many other things - that his hands were clean, ie no narco money, and that he was learning english, and some of his officers were.

And if we flash forward today - good news and bad news. There was a break in - in la floresta is the bad news. The good news is two english speaking officers quickly showed up when called. And I think the latter is a sign of progress that is happening under this police chief.

And you are right about the community - we are all part of it - and this is just an effort to help one person in the community

Thanks for offering to post on the other web boards!

And thank you to those that have donated!

Wish I could have donated more.

I took Mr. Dawgs lead and deleted all the irrelevant/unproductive posts. If anyone wants to carry on in the Octagon please feel free to do so.

Thank you all for your contributions! The amount that has been donated to paypal to date is $471.78 USD.

As of a week ago, the only donation made to the Lloyds account was the one when opened. However, this week several people advised they would make donations directly to the Lloyds account - but I don't have the account information - I am just handling the paypal part.

When it comes time to wrap things up, will let you know both amounts and total. And the paypal records will be turned over to either the account holder or the expat liaison - so everything can be viewed as up and up.

Thanks for your support and donations! You can still make donations to paypal through Monday evening - no donation is too small http://www.lakesidecrime.com/donate