Examples Of Self-Help In The Face Of Criminality

And, no, I'm not talking about self-defense. What I'm talking about are normal citizens taking the law into their own hands when law enforcement and the justice system can't or won't do anything. In the U.S. it is still mild because, for the most part, we have functioning systems.

• "Queens 'squatters' flee in disgrace after being confronted at house where homeowner was arrested - but one 'legal' tenant is staying (and wants his deposit back!)"--Daily Mail (March 20, 2024). This incident, if you remember, involved a woman who owned a house in Queens, NY, that discovered squatters in her house. The squatters refused to leave and the woman was arrested when she tried to force the issue. Although the article indicate that the media attention shamed two of the squatters to leave, at the very bottom of the article, it also notes that "vigilantes" had shown up. 

But, like I said, this is mild to what could happen if law and order disappeared or became largely ineffective. Instead, in those cases, we see stories like these from Haiti and Mexico, respectively: 

• "Police in Haiti say 2 men were hacked to death by a mob who thought they were buying ammo for gangs"--AP. An excerpt:

    Police confirmed the crowd snatched the men from police custody after they were found with about $20,000 and the equivalent of about $43,000 in Haitian cash in their car, along with two pistols and a box of ammunition.

    Carrying that amount of cash was considered suspicious, and residents assumed it was a weapons purchase for the gangs.

    The killings happened Friday in a town near the provincial city of Mirebalais. Police appeared to fire warning shots into the air to try to prevent the killings, but the mob killed them anyway. One of the victims was a police officer, and the other was a former guard, according to their identification documents.

    The killings underscored how outnumbered police are in Haiti, and the anger of Haitians after months of killings, kidnappings and armed attacks by the country's gangs.

• "Mexican mob drags woman suspected of killing eight-year-old girl out of police car and brutally beats her to death in front of cops"--Daily Mail. From the lede:

    Horrific footage revealed the moment an angry mob dragged a suspected child kidnapper and killer out of a police car and beat her to death in the Mexican tourist town of Taxco.

    The unnamed woman was being hauled away by police, after she had allegedly been caught on surveillance video helping a man dump the body of Camila Gomez Ortega who had disappeared Wednesday.

    The villagers dragged the woman out of the police car and began wailing on her and tearing at her clothes.

    'We are fed up,' a woman who identified herself as Andrea told the Associated Press. 'This time it was an 8-year-old girl.'

    'This is the result of the bad government we have. This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened, but this is the first time the people have done something.' 

Despite the surveillance video, the pleadings of the victim's family and neighbors, and even public protests and demonstrations, the article states that the police refused to arrest the woman. The police only responded and agreed to arrest the woman when a mob attacked the women's house.