We never went into La Perla, well...almost never. I went down there one time on a P-day with a large group of missionaries. There are a few housing developments (projects, called casarios) that we weren't supposed to go into and where the police wouldn't enter after dark; unless there were a bunch of them.

We were in one of those casarios one night with some members for a family night with their neighbors when a gun fight broke out down on the playground. We were on the 3rd or 4th floor and could see down into the kids shooting at each other. Pretty scary and we wanted to call the cops because we were going to be leaving pretty soon. The members said no way, don't bother calling the cops because they won't come out. We just had to wait about an hour and then they ran us down to our bikes and we booked it out of there.

Back in the day SJ was a major drug relay spot. There were a lot of dangerous areas, but most of the island was perfectly safe and very beautiful full of wonderful people.