Tag: vigilantes
Mexican Vigilantes Won’t Disarm, Defying Government Order

Mexican Vigilantes Won’t Disarm, Defying Government Order

By Richard Fausset and Cecilia Sanchez, Los Angeles Times

MEXICO CITY — A leader of the vigilante “self-defense” movement in Mexico’s Michoacan Monday refused a government order to disarm, and roadblocks to keep out federal forces charged with taking away the vigilantes’ weapons were reported in numerous cities.

Vigilante leader Jose Manuel Mireles said in a radio interview that the government had not sufficiently pacified the state. “Armed and masked” drug cartel members began appearing in the streets just hours after the government’s announcement last week declaring it was time for the vigilantes to disarm, he said.

“For that reason we are reinforcing our trenches,” Mireles said. “We are going to lay down the arms when the federal government and the state have finished the work of cleaning the state of Michoacan of criminals.”

In a number of Michoacan cities over the weekend, residents supporting the vigilantes protested the government plan to send home the so-called autodefensa militias, which have portrayed themselves as protectors of the people against the depredations of the Knights Templar drug cartel.

The newspaper Reforma reported Monday that 27 highways had been blocked Sunday by self-defense groups to prevent military convoys from entering certain areas.

In an interview Monday, a federal government official charged with resolving the Michoacan crisis said there was “much collaboration” between the vigilantes and the government: “The majority of the leaders of the self-defense groups in Tierra Caliente (the troubled region known as the Hot Land) agree with the disarming. In the next few days these actions will continue until every one of these groups have turned in their weapons.”

When asked what would happen to those vigilantes who refused, the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, replied: “They have to turn in (their weapons). Period … There is no other option.”

Re-establishing the government’s monopoly on the use of force in Michoacan has been one of the enduring challenges for the administration of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Until recently, the government has worked with some of the vigilantes to help cleanse the region of cartel members, even though the integrity of the vigilante movement has been called into question.

Two autodefensa leaders have been arrested in separate homicide cases, and the Mexican attorney general has said that at least some of the vigilante weapons were supplied by a rival drug cartel.

At least two people were killed in January when Mexican federal authorities clashed with recalcitrant self-defense group members in an effort to disarm them.

The federal government has dealt a number of blows to the Knights Templar’s leadership in recent weeks, killing high-ranking members Enrique Plancarte Solis and Nazario Moreno Gonzalez.

The man believed to be the top boss, Servando “La Tuta” Gomez, remains at large.

On Saturday, federal authorities detained Michoacan’s interior minister, Jesus Reyna, after determining that he had “possible contacts with criminal organization.” Reyna has not been charged with a crime.

 Don Bartletti/Los Angeles Times/MCT

‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws Encourage Vigilantes

‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws Encourage Vigilantes

It’s been a harsh February, and I’m not talking about the weather. As the annual celebration of the accomplishments of black Americans, replete with references to President Obama, was winding down, the month presented a stark reminder of the casual bigotry that still haunts the lives of black citizens. The verdict in the Florida shooting of Jordan Davis was an unwelcome specter over Black History Month.

While Michael Dunn, who killed Davis in a dispute over loud music, will probably serve decades in prison for the attempted murders of Davis’ friends, he has so far escaped punishment for the death of an unarmed adolescent. The jury deadlocked on a single count of first-degree murder.

A juror told ABC’s Nightline that race never entered the deliberations, but it’s obvious that pernicious stereotypes about young black men hung over the proceedings. And those prejudices allowed Dunn to escape justice for Davis’ death. (Just try to imagine the opposite scenario: A black teenager claims an unarmed white man made him fear for his life, kills him and gets away with it.)

There are no laws or policies that can eradicate stereotypes, no simple cures for implicit bias. But Florida can repeal its awful “stand your ground” law, which has allowed that bigotry free rein. So can the several other states that have passed expanded “self-defense” laws that let trigger-happy gun toters open fire on the unarmed. The streets are made less safe when paranoid gun owners are able to turn a non-violent dispute into a death sentence.

Florida’s “stand your ground” law is merely the worst — the most easily abused — of those laws. Last month, in a Tampa suburb, a retired police captain shot an unarmed man dead in an argument over texting in a movie theater. The retiree claims he felt threatened.

Years ago, Florida’s law, like most, required a person who feared for his life to “retreat” if it were possible to do so. If you could leave, you were not in mortal danger, according to the law.

That changed when a diminutive firearms fanatic named Marion Hammer ascended to the presidency of the National Rifle Association in the mid-1990s. She was a chief architect of “stand your ground” and a forceful lobbyist for its 2005 passage, insisting that law-abiding citizens needed it to protect themselves from thugs.

I interviewed Hammer during her NRA presidency, and her tales were instructive. Though her oft-told lore includes a story about fending off a gang about to attack her in the 1980s, she told me that she had pulled her weapon three times to protect herself from would-be assailants.

That sounded like a person seeking out unsafe settings, looking for danger, wanting to be a vigilante. And that’s exactly the sort of personality who ought to be reined in by the law — not encouraged.

The attention-seeking George Zimmerman, who killed an unarmed Trayvon Martin, is just that kind. He stalked Martin through his gated community even after a police dispatcher advised him to stop following.

It’s not at all clear what motivated Michael Dunn, but he seemed awfully self-satisfied after firing on a carload of young men. After he shot 10 rounds into the SUV, hitting Davis three times, he returned to his hotel room and had pizza.

Dunn’s social views, by the way, are shot through with bigotry, as a letter he wrote from jail revealed:

“This jail is full of blacks and they all act like thugs,” he wrote. “This may sound a bit radical but if more people would arm themselves and kill these … idiots when they’re threatening you, eventually they may take the hint and change their behavior. … The more time I am exposed to these people, the more prejudiced against them I become.”

“Stand your ground” laws simply encourage the Michael Dunns of the world to act on their worst impulses.

(Cynthia Tucker, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a visiting professor at the University of Georgia. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.)

AFP Photo