They learned the hard way not to drive out alone.
Officials inspecting water theft in Monterrey, Mexico, started going out in convoys of three or four cars accompanied by police because others before them had been pelted with stones or had their cars surrounded. Once, one of them was briefly taken hostage.
Those kinds of threats were not what Erika Flores expected when she became an environmental regulation inspector in the country’s business capital. But when her role turned to tracking down and enforcing water theft during a drought-induced crisis last summer, Flores’ job grew increasingly dangerous.
