The number of Tulum police patrols on the road and the number of street cameras that still work will stay classified until 2031. The municipal police secretariat confirmed both reserves in a letter dated July 7.
The letter, oficio SSPyPC/1584/2026, carries the signature of Edgar Aguilar Rico, secretary of Public Security and Citizen Protection, and is addressed to the city's transparency office. It answers a public information request filed through the Plataforma Nacional de Transparencia under folio 1411288000012226.
Security has been the stated priority of the municipal government since Diego Castañón Trejo was sworn in on September 30, 2024. The reserve means nobody outside city hall can check the condition of the force meant to deliver it, and nobody will be able to check for the rest of this administration or the whole of the next.
A request that began with sargassum
The original request was broad. It asked how much money the municipality has spent fighting sargassum since 2024, which contracts were signed, which companies were paid, what machinery was bought, how many tons were collected, and what letters had gone to the state and federal governments asking for help. Then it turned to the police force. Then to crime figures, compared against the previous five years.
The transparency office routed the security portion to the police secretariat on June 23 through oficio MT/UTAIPPDPT/0556/2026. The answer came back 14 days later, limited, as the letter states, to matters within that secretariat's competence. The sargassum questions are not addressed in it.
Tulum police patrols, sealed by two committee votes
Two agreements do the work. The first, ACT-ORD-01/06/2026.04, came out of the Transparency Committee's sixth ordinary session on June 1 and covers the patrol fleet: how many units are active, how many are out of service, how many sit in repair, and what the municipality pays to maintain them. The second, ACT-EXT-07/07/2026.03, came out of the twelfth extraordinary session on July 7 and covers how many surveillance cameras are actually functioning.
Both are classified as a partial reserve for five years. The letter does not specify what, if anything, remains disclosable within those categories.
Five years is the ceiling. Under Mexico's harmonized transparency framework, a body may reserve information for a maximum of five years from the date of classification, and may extend it once by up to five more years only if its own Transparency Committee approves a damage test showing the original grounds still hold. Tulum took the full initial term available to it in both cases.
The arithmetic reaches further than one government. The patrol reserve runs to June 2031 and the camera reserve to July 2031. The current administration ends in 2027. The next one, 2027 to 2030, will come and go entirely inside the reserve period, and the one after it will be several months old before either file opens.
Cameras classified on the day the answer went out
The dates line up in a way the letter does not explain. The extraordinary session that classified the camera data was held on July 7, 2026. The letter answering the request is dated July 7, 2026. The transparency office stamped it received at 3:57 that afternoon.
No public record explains why the session was convened that day, and the municipality has not offered one.
Blindaje Tulum announced 15 patrols and 600 cameras
The figures now under reserve were public property less than two years ago. On October 21, 2024, Castañón launched Blindaje Tulum, a three-stage security strategy built around 15 new patrol vehicles, 70 additional officers with a stated goal of 200, a tourist police unit, the C4 command center, and the purchase of 600 surveillance cameras. The 15 vehicles were handed over that November at a public ceremony.
What cannot now be established from municipal records is how many of those units still run, or how many of those cameras are transmitting.
Aguilar Rico himself took the post on July 2, 2025, four months after his predecessor, José Roberto Rodríguez Bautista, was killed on March 21 of that year. In his first week, he suspended traffic fines and halted the municipal tow operation, telling local reporters the corporation would work with transparency and responsibility.
Where an appeal goes now
On the crime statistics, the letter neither delivers nor denies. It cites the transparency obligations in article 75, section XXVIII of the state law, points to the Plataforma Nacional de Transparencia, and walks the requester through the search screens: select Quintana Roo, select the fiscal year, select ROO-MUNICIPIO DE TULUM. The five-year comparison the request asked for is not provided.
A classification can be challenged. A requester who considers a reserve improper may file a recurso de revisión, and under the state transparency law published in November 2025, municipal cases now go to the Instituto Quintanarroense de Transparencia para el Pueblo, a deconcentrated body attached to the Secretaría Anticorrupción y Buen Gobierno de Quintana Roo. Separately, the index of classified files cannot itself be reserved. Every reserve must appear there with its start date, its end date, and its justification.
No challenge to either agreement has been made public. Unless the committee revokes them, or the state authority orders otherwise, the patrol count returns to public reach in June 2031, and the camera count a month after that.
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