MEXICO CITY — The first gunshot drew me racing to the window. The second sent me ducking to the floor.
A crime scene was unfolding below my second-floor apartment, and it took a few moments to make sense of its moving parts: the two burly men sprinting toward a taxi; the red-and-white cab trying to maneuver out of traffic; a uniformed bank guard pointing his revolver; the second pop of gunfire.
No one was hurt. But the taxi, trapped in lunch-hour traffic, was surrounded as the guard and two police officers approached slowly on foot, guns drawn. Sidewalk gawkers froze. The taxi driver thrust his hands out the window in surrender. His two beefy passengers also gave up at the sight of more police hurrying from a substation down the block.
Our picture window, which normally offers a balcony-seat vantage on a parade of candy sellers, roving musicians, tamale hawkers and hipsters, on this day looked out on a drearier reality of life in Mexico City: crime. To be sure, this was a tiny incident, a jot of trouble in a city plagued by kidnappings, stickups and, as the crime pages track, ample gunplay.
The ruckus began with an attempted carjacking, it turned out, by thieves with the poor sense -- or bad luck -- to try to steal a Mercedes-Benz sedan in front of a bank with an armed police guard. Their getaway was also foiled by circumstance: too many cars on a cramped restaurant row.
But perhaps the most intriguing moment came when the handcuffed suspects were hustled toward waiting police cruisers. The looky-loos, numbering in the dozens as people poured from eateries, shops, and the bank, did something extraordinary for Mexico.
They cheered the police.
It started as polite claps, and then swelled to a throaty roar and whistles. People gathered around the guard, a member of the bank-protection division of the Mexico City police, to shake his hand and slap his back in congratulations and thanks.
Other officers grinned at the applause, which surprised them. For a few glorious moments, they were heroes and seemed to swell inside their standard-issue flak jackets.
People are normally cynical about the police in Mexico, where it's often hard to tell the criminals from the crime-fighters. Some Mexicans would rather cross paths with a rattlesnake than a cop, who they expect will view the most minor offense as an opportunity to collect a bribe.
