The three bulletproof tactical vehicles donated by the United States to Costa Rica and that were received by the police bodies in Costa Rica at the end of January, did not pass technical revision, Riteve, due to three problems labeled as serious.

According to the information provided by the Ministry of Public Security the problems were: Lack of reflective stickers (the cars are completely black on purpose and the stickers could be a problem during a night operation); the exhaust system because the cars have a grill that has the function of preventing the possibility of any objects being inserted that could damage the car; and finally the lack of an exhaust muffler, which apparently is not needed in these cars since they make no noise.

Jennifer Hidalgo, spokesperson for Riteve, explained “In this case we are not authorize to override any of the defects found during the inspection, even if we understand that these vehicles have special characteristics. In this case what we do is point out the problems and the responsible parties must take the document along with a justification to the Road Safety and Education Council (COSEVI) explaining why each of the characteristics of the cars are needed in this case and COSEVI will give the approval”.

The Ministry of Public Security confirmed they have already presented the documents to COSEVI and are awaiting their response for next Monday.

The CSI Nemesis cars are not the first vehicles to face this type of problems with technical revision, the cars recently purchased by the government for the use of the Firefighter Department in wildfires faced the same situation and had to undergo the same procedure to get their technical revision approved.

These three cars have a value of $625 thousand dollars.