Friday 27 July 2012

Mexico City women warned over taxi kidnappings

The Mexico City chief prosecutor's office revealed on 26 July that authorities were monitoring three gangs considered responsible for most "express" kidnappings that have occurred in three sectors of the city in recent months, the website Animal Político reported, citing statements made at a press conference. Prosecutor Óscar Montes de Oca Rosales said that seven of every 10 registered express kidnappings were against women, and these happened mostly when they took taxis to work between 06:00 and 09:00 hours. Victims of such crimes - usually lasting hours or a day perhaps - are forced to hand over cash and withdraw cash from dispensers. Montes de Oca said authorities were observing the methods used by these gangs, which he said operated in the generally middle-class sectors of Coyoacán, Cuauhtémoc and Benito Juárez. A classic method was reported to be the taxi stopping for a technical problem, allowing accomplices to arrive. Separately, one of the capital's Green Party politicians said on 25 July that authorities had but a "partial" map of crimes in the capital, since citizens did not even report 80 per cent of crimes for distrusting the police and lawcourts, often perceived as corrupt, Notimex reported. The Green Ecological Party of Mexico (PVEM) sided with the winning Institutional Revolutionary Party in the 1 July general elections, though it was unclear how much policy-making power it would yield in any future administration. The PVEM leader in the capital Samuel Rodríguez Torres said this public distrust was fuelling insecurity in the capital. He said the "preventive police" were neither acting against the 13,000 points of sale for drugs thought to exist in the capital nor using information supplied by the police intelligence centre C4i4 or images from the city's 12,000 security cameras.