I too live in Mexico and have for over a decade. If you say you feel physically safer here, it's because you live in a bubble of safety that's probably the result of having enough money to carefully choose where you reside and having picked a place where crime and insecurity haven't quite filtered to yet. Despite this, it's grossly mistaken or even dishonest to paint this country as a safer place than the U.S. The police are almost uniformly corrupt throughout, and where they don't engage in frequently criminal levels of corruption and extortion, they're often simply inept and unresponsive. God help you if a family member should be a victim of a serious crime or kidnapping here. You will very likely receive a terrible if not outrageously corrupt police response. Exceptions exist, but they're not at all the norm.

Now moving onto crime: Though certain parts of the country are safer from it and some places are remarkably peaceful, no honest person should understate how generally pervasive violent crime of many types has become throughout a growing percentage of the country. NO, IT IS NOT about just drug cartels or people involved in the black markets. Extortion, kidnappings, assaults and murders have reached a point where they affect many people from all sectors even if they're often careful.

Now obviously, Mexico isn't some caricature from a Hollywood movie in which one dodges bullets just by stepping outside, and it's possible to be fairly safe in many parts of the country. However, danger and an inability to respond effectively to crime if you are a victim of it go hand in hand and are much more common than many bubble-ensconced expats claim. The murder rate in the country is 6 times higher than it is in the U.S as a whole, in 2021, murders have reached their highest levels since the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century, and this not to even mention forced disappearances, unreported murders or the numerous types of lesser violent crime that are widespread.

To claim that you're physically safer in Mexico than in the U.S is an exercise in extraordinarily selective thinking or very particular, completely non-general circumstances.

Again, I live here, have for many years and have many friends throughout this country from all levels of the socieconomic ladder. Many of them have been victims of crime in many situations. All have at some point been the victims of police corruption.