Vigilante

Phil Carpenter's letter (July 16) about vigilantism and Megan's Law is as shortsighted and poorly thought out as the law itself. Carpenter believes that the only people who have to fear Megan's Law are the criminals themselves. This is simply not true. What if a vigilante decided to burn the home of a registered sex offender? What if neighboring homes caught on fire? What if the neighbors in those homes burned to death? It is easy to see how this law could have a negative effect on many more people than the registered sex offender.

The callers to the radio program were voicing their support for the Matazetas, the Zeta killers. Better they fight among themselves. Let them kill each other. Anything to rid us of the thugs who long ago took control of our city and are slaughtering our people. It is a sign of the desperation and deep outrage over surging drug-war violence that a shadowy group of vigilante killers is not only tolerated but welcomed by many here in Mexico's third-most populous state. Full coverage: The drug war in Mexico Yet it also comes with a disturbing question: Just who is behind the killings of Zetas — another drug gang?

As her mother tells it, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores had begged the border vigilantes who had just broken into her house, "Please don't shoot me. " But they did ? in the face at point-blank range, prosecutors allege, as Brisenia's father sat dead on the couch and her mother lay on the floor, pretending that she too had been killed in the gunfire. FOR THE RECORD: Border vigilante: A story in Wednesday's Section A on the trial of a border vigilante in Arizona accused of killing a 9-year-old girl and her father misidentified a defense attorney in the case.

Political fanaticism fosters moral relativism. That's the lesson we should all learn from the gruesome case of Shawna Forde, the Arizona anti-immigrant vigilante who was convicted last week of two counts of first-degree murder. FOR THE RECORD: Morality: A Feb. 21 column about the way fanaticism breeds moral relativism referred to the murder of a landlady in Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment. " The murder victim was a pawnbroker. Prosecutors argued that Forde and two accomplices killed 29-year-old Raul Junior Flores and his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia, in a botched robbery attempt meant to raise money to fund a splinter group of the anti-immigrant Minuteman movement.

If the revenge thriller seems like an especially inflexible genre, it might be because its founding formula is basically a biblical credo: an eye for an eye. In film after film, a vigilante hero is wronged and because of the failures of the legal system must take matters into his -- or, in some cases, her -- own hands. There is no real suspense over the outcome -- payback is exacted, in due course -- but the nominal pleasures of most of these movies lie precisely in their familiarity, in their brazen appeal to our most basic instincts.

Florentina Roble, a neighborhood official in this war-torn city 600 miles south of Manila, dropped by the office of the city's military commander last week to volunteer her services in the struggle against the nation's Communist insurgency. Roble had never fired a gun in her life, she said. But the soft-spoken, middle-age woman told the commander that she would do her best to organize a civilian vigilante squad to keep the Communists out of her neighborhood.

Liberal guilt won out over a British hitman amid films in limited release this weekend. Director Nicole Holofcener's well-reviewed drama "Please Give," starring Catherine Keener, opened to an estimated $128,696 at three theaters in New York City and two in Los Angeles this weekend, giving it a healthy per-location average of $25,739. "Harry Brown," which stars Michael Caine as a reluctant aging vigilante, debuted to a decent but less impressive $180,957 at 19 theaters in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

I've waited three whole barren months, hoping for fall and some good movies. Well, today is nippy, but what do I have to look forward to in the next week? A crazy nun who either has or hasn't had a baby, and a female vigilante. Thrilling. Just thrilling. How about some romance, Hollywood? I wanna see a love story. I'm going to stay home and watch television. J. C. NORTON Los Angeles

Regarding the placement of security guards at polling places, the Republican leaders responsible have hit an all-time low in modern-day American politics. It is difficult to accept their excuse for vigilante actions. After all, couldn't they call and alert the appropriate government agencies, or did they really have their own secret agenda? IRA J. SEAVER Westlake Village

After reading Tom Shales' commentary in the Feb. 2 Television Times (prime-time terrorism), I couldn't help thinking that he left one notable TV vigilante off his list. Lt. Buntz, new to "Hill Street Blues," certainly has a knack for taking matters into his own hands when it comes to dispensing justice. In almost every episode this season, the lieutenant has managed to rid the "Hill" of one or two unsavory criminals by, at the very least, bending a few rules. He has no qualms about what amounts to arranging or conducting executions.

A 3 a.m. car ride from the airport to downtown Cairo during curfew is a trip between two armed camps fighting for the future of Egypt. Outside the airport Tuesday, the road is immediately blocked by chunks of concrete, and a dozen young men wielding broom handles and a baseball bat approach. When I identify myself as a journalist from the U.S., the well-dressed men smile and say, "Welcome to Egypt," motioning for the driver to pass with me and another passenger. Thirty yards later it is the army that stops us, an officer and several soldiers with an armored personnel carrier as backup.

He's grizzled and stooped, and speaks humbly of his job at Egypt's premier pediatric cancer facility. He's just a mechanic, he says. He fixes the hospital's fleet of vehicles. But as an epidemic of looting swept the capital over the weekend, Farag Abdul Fatah Ahmed had a far more important role to play: Helping save the hospital he loves from plunderers. On Saturday, with Egyptian police absent from the streets as the capital was racked by political unrest, a gang of 15 or 20 men armed with crude weapons tried to force its way into Children's Cancer Hospital in the Cairo neighborhood of Dokki.

Looting spread across Egypt and President Hosni Mubarak appointed a vice president as protesters swarmed into the streets for a fifth day, burning buildings, ransacking police offices and marching joyfully past tanks and soldiers. Demonstrations aimed at ending Mubarak's 30 years in power were eclipsed for many by a growing fear of lawlessness. After police retreated following clashes with protesters, vigilantes armed with sticks and knives patrolled Cairo neighborhoods. Reports spread that escaped prisoners and thugs from the ruling party were roaming the capital and other cities on motorcycles.

As her mother tells it, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores had begged the border vigilantes who had just broken into her house, "Please don't shoot me. " But they did ? in the face at point-blank range, prosecutors allege, as Brisenia's father sat dead on the couch and her mother lay on the floor, pretending that she too had been killed in the gunfire. Even as this city continues to mourn the victims in the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, another tragedy took center stage Tuesday, as opening arguments began in the trial of a member of a Minutemen group accused of killing Brisenia and her father, Raul Flores Jr. Prosecutors allege that in May 2009, Shawna Forde decided to strike an odd alliance with drug dealers in southern Arizona: Forde would help the traffickers ransack their rivals' houses for stashes of drugs and cash, which could then fund her fledgling group, Minutemen American Defense.

They called her La Pelirroja , The Redhead. After languishing in jail on kidnapping charges for more than a year, she was abruptly sprung from custody two days after Christmas, during what may have been a bogus medical transfer. But instead of being freed, Gabriela Muniz was within days found hanging by the neck from a pedestrian overpass in Mexico's wealthiest city, Monterrey ? a brutally rare fate for a woman, even amid this nation's depraved and escalating drug violence.

Liberal guilt won out over a British hitman amid films in limited release this weekend. Director Nicole Holofcener's well-reviewed drama "Please Give," starring Catherine Keener, opened to an estimated $128,696 at three theaters in New York City and two in Los Angeles this weekend, giving it a healthy per-location average of $25,739. "Harry Brown," which stars Michael Caine as a reluctant aging vigilante, debuted to a decent but less impressive $180,957 at 19 theaters in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

Re: "The Vigilante of Carthay Square" (Sept. 25) Hooray for Joe Connolly. Local police no longer serve as a preventive deterrent to the criminal element but often are a reactive after-thought, i.e., the crime has been perpetrated, you are now a victim, and the police arrive 30 minutes later to take a report. It is quite evident that the Thin Blue Line cannot effectively police our communities. Living here during the L.A. riots has revealed the impotence of law enforcement. The sense of frustration and feeling of dissatisfaction (with police)

With its mix of minor-key character study and guns a-blazin' action, "Harry Brown" provides a powerful platform for two-time Oscar winner Michael Caine to play off the iconography of his previous characters, such as Jack Carter in "Get Carter" and Harry Palmer in "The Ipcress File." But "Harry Brown" is much more than just a homage to Caine's double-barreled past. "For me, it … is not a violent film, it's a film about violence," the 77-year-old Caine said recently. As "Harry Brown" opens, Caine's titular character, an elderly widower, sheepishly takes the long way around a pedestrian underpass to avoid the hooligans who hang about its entrance.