Safety in the RGV

Geeze wrote:

Dog Trainer wrote:
Please forgive me for stirring the pot here. We are new snowbirds having spent a part of last year in central Fl. and presently in Fl. until late march.
We were talking about what we might do next year and the RGV is a possibility. We mentioned this to some folks that had recently left Brownsville TX. and they stated that we had better be careful down there because there is a lot of crime. I know a lot of you spend your winters there and we are not even a little bit wimpy or afraid of things. I am prudent a do research where we will be going so I wonder how much weight to give to the safety issue in the RGV. One comment this person made was that the Walmart in Brownsville now had armed guards. Thanks for your input.

I realize this is an older post but after spending a week in the RGV recently I can say we felt as safe there as we would have in any larger city. Coming from a predominately white midwest area it was definitely culture shock the first time we visited the valley. The population there is probably 95% Hispanic but we found the people to be friendly, courteous and for the most part very polite drivers.Spanish seems to be the primary language however most are bilingual. We plan to winter there when we retire in a few years.

We spent most of our time in the Donna area and no we didn't venture out after dark but we probably wouldn't have in any large metropolitan area. I'm sure one could become the victim of a crime in the area if they didn't use a little common sense. When I travel I look for areas with bars on the windows. That is usually a fairly good indication of the crime rate in that area. And yes somes areas there had bars on the windows.