How do you behave here, and what do you do if something happens?

The guide about neighbourhoods says where it is safe. This one is about what to do with that: how to behave, what to actually worry about, and what to do the moment something happens. I write it as someone who has spent fifteen years assessing risk for a living, and the main thing I know about risk is this: statistics are about the city, behaviour is about you.

The one rule everyone here knows

No dar papaya. Literally "do not give away papaya", meaning do not offer an opportunity. It is not victim blaming, it is a description of how petty crime works here: most theft is opportunistic, and the opportunity is created by the person who gets robbed.

In practice that is a phone in your hand on the kerb side of the pavement, an expensive watch, a laptop left on a café table, a backpack worn on your back in a crowd, three beers and a walk home at two in the morning.

What the real risk in Medellín is today

Not the armed street robbery everyone flying in for the first time is afraid of. The most common way a foreigner loses everything here is being drugged.

The 2026 numbers are not comforting: thefts involving scopolamine rose by 89%, and police record hundreds of cases this year. Most come from El Poblado, then Laureles and La Candelaria, exactly where the bars, restaurants and visitors are. In January 2026 police broke up a group that used dating apps to find victims, and more cases followed, including ones running to tens of millions of pesos.

How it goes: a match on an app, a date, an invitation to a flat or a hotel, a drink with something dissolved in it. The victim is then compliant for hours and remembers nothing. The account is emptied, the phone sold, the watch gone.

This is the one activity where I would tell a foreigner in Medellín plainly: do not do it. A first date from an app at your place or theirs is an order of magnitude more dangerous here than anything else you will do all day.

Rules that cost little and give a lot back

On the street. Take your phone out against a wall, not by the road. Leave the expensive watch at home; there is a watch market here and everyone knows it. Backpack on your front in a crowd. After dark you ride, you do not walk.

In a bar. Watch your drink and do not hand it over. Do not drink anything you did not see poured. If one beer suddenly has you swaying, it is not the beer, and that is the moment to ask the staff for help.

On a date. Public place, your own transport, tell someone where you are and with whom. Do not take anyone home and do not go anywhere on a first date.

With money. Two cards, one in your pocket, one at home. Daily limits set low. Cash machines inside shops, not on the street. Cash split between two places.

In a taxi. Use an app rather than hailing, and check the plate before you get in. The classic paseo millonario, a drive from one cash machine to the next, starts with a car flagged down on the street.

At home. Doorbells and reception desks are the norm here, use them. Couriers are met downstairs, not at your door.

What to do when it happens

This is the part most guides leave out, and the reason this text exists.

1. Do not resist. Nothing in your pocket is worth a knife. Resisting turns a theft into a robbery.

2. Call 123. One number for police, fire and ambulance. If you have been drugged, you need a doctor first, not the police.

3. Block what can be blocked. In this order: banking app and cards, then the phone. Phones are blocked by IMEI with the operator, which makes them useless even with another SIM. Keep the IMEI written down somewhere other than in that phone.

4. File a report. In person at the nearest police station or CAI, the small post on the corner, or online through the prosecutor's portal. You will need a copy for your insurer, your operator and for replacement documents.

5. A lost passport goes to your embassy in Bogotá. Keep a copy of the passport and visa in the cloud; with it this takes a day, without it a week.

6. Report it. Half the people here do not, because they think it is pointless, which is why the numbers look better than reality. A report costs an hour and it is the only thing that moves the city.

What is overdone

Never going downtown. La Candelaria by day is an ordinary city with a museum, a market and Botero. After dark you leave by car.

Fearing the comunas. Comuna 13 is a guided tourist route now. You do not wander into other comunas without a reason, which is true of every big city in the world.

A money belt under your trousers. Nobody frisks passers-by here. Two pockets are enough.

Trying to hide that you are a foreigner. You cannot. Better not to look like someone who does not know where they are going.

What I think after a year

Medellín has never robbed me. I walk around with headphones on, take my phone out without thinking, and call a car after nine in the evening. The statistics say the risk is rising, and they are right: what changed over the past year is mainly how people steal. Not more weapons, more deception.

The rules above add up to ten minutes a day. Over a year of living here it is the cheapest insurance I know.