Even in a 5-star restaurant you can find drugs or anything, despite the cameras.

A  new alcohol beverage control law was applied last month over the six municipalities of Baja California. Tijuana is the one in which it has caused the most complaints and controversy. Bars, nightclubs, restaurants, or breweries are now required by law to have a security cam system linked up to the State Security Department, known as “C4," install metal detectors, panic buttons, and train their employees to handle potentially violent situations.

This hasn't been considered helpful by small local restaurants and breweries. The Baja Brewers Association president Ruben Valenzuela says the law has wrongly categorized breweries as same as bars or nightclubs.

“We are not open till midnight, here people don't consume to get just drunk, instead they come to a tasting room. We're too small to hire a private security company right now." 

Most of the bars and nightclubs that don't close on weekends already have their cameras on but are not linked up to the state security office. They are being encouraged to report to the authorities when illegal activities are taking place. For Javier Contreras, who has worked as security in bars for the last six years, the nightlife violence won't slow down.

"Here people don't consume just to get drunk."

He noted that nightlife in Tijuana downtown brings out alcohol and drugs and with it violence. “I'd work in a 5-star restaurant and even there you can find drugs or anything, despite the cameras. It might work for when a phone is stolen or... Tijuana has a serious problem with missing women,  maybe there it could but what's the point if felons are back on the street in a matter of hours?”

Five years ago Rodrigo Montoya, a 32-year-old chef who used to hang with his friends at La Sexta in Tijuana's downtown, got in the middle of a shootout, receiving a shot in his chest. “I remember I just played dead while listening to the gunshots. When all got quiet I went to the bathroom and I saw someone bleeding out. Made my way out where my friends were and after 30 minutes or more the ambulance arrived. After those five years now I'm starting to go out at night sometimes. So I think it's a good initiative but still, if there had been cameras that day I think it would have happened outside of the bar anyway."

All three of those I spoke with highlighted the importance of getting to the roots of the issue, but since they have witnessed corruption, impunity, and even threats from big nightclub owners, expectations are not high.