Average Mexicans Fear Kidnap as Gangs Grow Ruthless

[gatorboy]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=572&ncid=572&e=2&u=/nm/20040818/lf_nm/mexico_kidnapping_dc

<snip>
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - First her kidnappers tried to strangle her with a rope. When that failed, they held her head beneath the waters of a sewage canal on the outskirts of Mexico City until she finally stopped breathing.

The botched kidnapping last month of Carmen Gutierrez, a top specialist in rehabilitative medicine who was named by a national group as Mexico's woman of the year in 1997, focused a spotlight on the methods of increasingly brutal and prolific kidnap gangs.

Using a fingerprint lifted from the victim's car, detectives were soon led to one of their own: a former policeman who had teamed up with a security guard at the apartment complex where the popular doctor lived.

Risk consultants Kroll Inc. rate Mexico second only to strife-torn Colombia in global kidnapping rankings. They estimate there were 3,000 kidnappings in Mexico last year, around 20 times the number reported to the country's notoriously corrupt police.
<snip>

Didn't they just pay Guiliani $4.3 million in consulting fees last year to help lower crime?
He's doing a great job! Imagine what he could do as vice president! :P