Fears about cops fuel Mexico kidnap outrage

Fed up residents
Anger also boiled over last week when residents of the central Mexico town of Tlapanala managed to surround and disarm a gang of seven kidnappers posing as police. They held them for 24 hours, pounding the men to bloody pulps.

Mexico abandoned the death penalty long ago and considers life sentences to be cruel and unusual punishment. Only in 2005 did Mexico agree to extradite suspects facing life sentences in the United States. But this week, the small Green Party proposed reinstating capital punishment for police who participate in kidnappings, or for kidnappers who kill their victims.

Calderon has proposed life imprisonment for the worst kidnapping cases, currently punishable by 50 years.

The Attorney General's Office says increasingly diversified organized crime cartels "now operate in drug trafficking, kidnapping and money laundering, among other things, with no central control or any one gang dominating any of the criminal activities.

"That is why kidnapping has grown more competitive, with kidnappers using much more violence against each other and against the victims, in a bid to gain territory, markets or dominance," the report says.

An anti-crime march in 2004 drew more than a quarter-million people and damaged the presidential aspirations of the capital's mayor at the time, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Another such mass march has been called for Aug. 30.

Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino worries that growing anger could lead to more vigilantism and mob justice.

"It is clear that the public is indignant, is angry, and it has a right to be," Mourino said. "If we are not able to reach agreements and channel these demands into clear and concrete steps, then yes, people could start taking other types of action that wouldn't solve the problem or benefit anyone."

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