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Vigilantes vow to kill one criminal every 24 hours
Ain Soph
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From the article here: http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_11466731
A group of vigilantes in Juaréz, Mexico calling themselves the Juárez Citizens Command has vowed to kill one criminal every 24 hours until the crime in the city is brought under control.
Juaréz is home to various rival drug traffickers, groups of organized crime and other assorted criminal activity. Last year the city alone had 1600 murders and 40 already recorded this year.
So what does D&D think of this? Are they right in there methods? Are there other things they could be doing? What does this convey to citizens in other large cities with high crime rates? Will we be seeing vigilante groups in Los Angeles, Detroit, or New Orleans?
A group of vigilantes in Juaréz, Mexico calling themselves the Juárez Citizens Command has vowed to kill one criminal every 24 hours until the crime in the city is brought under control.
Juaréz is home to various rival drug traffickers, groups of organized crime and other assorted criminal activity. Last year the city alone had 1600 murders and 40 already recorded this year.
So what does D&D think of this? Are they right in there methods? Are there other things they could be doing? What does this convey to citizens in other large cities with high crime rates? Will we be seeing vigilante groups in Los Angeles, Detroit, or New Orleans?
:whistle:
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It can work, but the costs are pretty fucking high. As in, people still getting murdered.
I'm sure the Mexican death squads will be just as wonderful for their society as their counterparts elsewhere.
Good luck I guess. Seems to me that if you can afford a death squad you can afford to get the hell out of there, though.
Also seems to me that becoming a death squad is making yourself into part of the problem.
How do you define working in this situation?
They wouldn't be killing people if they were that.
I'm not willing to condemn this action immediately out of hand. What if this is all the citizens have left for recourse? What if this is all they're able to do to protect their families and their homes from the drug war that's spiraling out of control?
It's never good to kill outside the legal system, and rarely good to kill within it, I think. But there are points at which there's more to lose not taking such action.
This won't prevent it from spiraling out of control.
Just because it's getting worse doesn't mean it isn't already out of control.
Breaking up existing gangs, getting rid of gangsters who order hits and kill people
Of course, you're pretty much just creating new gangs, including your own
Drug cartels will be able to throw more guys wit more guns at them, and things get way worse.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I can understand the circumstances that might result in the people of Juarez turning to vigilantism. I sympathize with them, even if their choices will ultimately bring more violence down on their heads. They're in a bad situation and trying to make the best of it.
I won't necessarily agree that vigilantism is idiotic. It's obvious that the policing there is not working, and these people feel they are left with little or no recourse.
When your police force is having confrotations with your national army, you know you have problems.
How is forming a posse and saying 'knock it the fuck off' explicitly the wrong move, here? I don't necessarily agree with outright murdering people, but if the community decides to enact a death penalty and then carries it out, is that really wrong?
In the movies and around the debating table, maybe not. In reality, I've never heard of a single case of this going well. On the other hand, I've heard of many, many cases of it going terribly wrongly.
What would be a successful way of solving this? In a stable society, the government must have the monopoly on the use of violence. If the government cannot perform this core duty, the citizenry's only hope is to find a way to create a new government, be it at the ballot box or through revolution.
Barring that, they're pretty much fucked. The death squads will, if they act like death squads everywhere else in the world, turn into a new gang, as there's no endpoint in a group whose purpose is to amass weapons and turn them on the populace - even the "evil" members of the populace - as there will always be new criminals to kill and profitable incentives to expand that definition to include other enemies of the state, like labor unionists, anti-government protestors and anti-social elements like homosexuals, punk kids and people who speak out against death squads.
Mob justice against street gangs is not justice at all. And for anything to be considered 'policing' it requires that a criminal justice system with legal protections exists along with the enforcement to ensure a fair and impartial meting out of the law. Shooting/stringing someone up because you know that they totally deserve it is not policing your community; it's just introducing another, more sanctimonious gang into the mix.
1.5 million people according to wiki
Juarez is a massive area, with millions of people. It's also a dystopian industrial sprawl city full of transient workers, as it's the location of thouands of massive factories that make products for Western corporations. It's made up of tons of poor people, tenement housing and a huge crime problem even outside of the drug trade.
It's most recent claim to fame is as the area where hundreds - maybe thousands - of women have disappeared as they went to and left their factory jobs. The theories for this range from the city having attracted a massive serial killer cluster to local gangs kidnapping women in order to chop them up and sell their organs on the black market for transplants.
Although if anything a smaller town would probably be even worse. I don't know where you grew up, but small towns have a tendency to be very factional. Lots of dirty deeds and personal misgivings just waiting to be avenged.
EDIT: Beaten
I'm not saying it will, it's just a distinctly good possibility.
And I'm still not sure what better option these people have. They're fucked no matter what they do.
The Declaration of Independence was based not simply on No Taxation Without Representation but also the failure of the Crown to provide Justice. Perhaps what this city needs is not a mob but a new government.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I've seen this "failed state" term get thrown about around Mexico lately.
Vigilantes do not equal revolutionaries.
Vigilante justice is always top down. It's the wealthy and middle class dispensing justice on the "bad" elements of their society. That's why it always goes badly. There's no end point and the path of least resistance usually ends with the vigilante groups realizing that it's a lot easier and more profitable to stop fighting the hardcore criminals - who fight back - and start working for the rich folk, who will pay the squads to kill labor agitators and other anti-rich folk types.
Revolutionaries are bottom up. There's an end point as well. Providing that the revolution does not drag on perpetually and turn the rebels into death squads or warlords, then the revolutionaries will win and create a government more interested in solving the problem. As the new government will have legitimate police, courts and jails, there's a chance for it to bring stability.
Yea they would be whiney little bitches.