Vigilantes

It was a bright-blue winter morning in this Bible Belt capital, and Brian Bates was happy. The balmy weather conditions, he explained, were conducive to his peculiar line of work: public humiliation. Steering wheel in one hand, camcorder in the other, Bates slowly drove a white Ford Explorer with tinted windows past a procession of sad-eyed prostitutes. But his camera was not trained on them; it was targeting their customers.

The "green bomber" dropped into Club M5 the other day to get a bottle of Lion beer to go, but he wasn't fast enough. Right away he was surrounded by five members of the opposition, people he used to beat up, in a township bar where he used to be king. "They just surrounded me. They started accusing me of this and that. They just wanted revenge. They said: 'Now we got you alone. You used to trouble us during your heyday. Now it's our day.' " He ran, chased by the drunken group.

The private eyes in China's most famous detective agency rarely sleep, are relentless in pursuing their prey and can put Interpol and Homeland Security to shame. Oh, and they work for free. But before you think about hiring them, there's a catch. The detectives are all online: millions of people working together as a "human flesh search engine," a bizarre term meant to capture the mix of cutting-edge and old-as-the-hills tactics used in a growing number of Internet vigilante campaigns here.

Witnesses to a robbery at a Walgreens on Wednesday evening tackled the suspect after he left the store and held him until officers arrived and arrested him, police said. Jose Hernandez, 19, of Westminster was being held on suspicion of robbery. Lt. Jack Davidson of the Westminster Police Department said Hernandez walked into the store, in the 8000 block of Westminster Boulevard, claiming to have a weapon, and demanded cash from the store clerk.

Hundreds of Bolivians fed up with underage drinking and crime stormed a neighborhood of bars and brothels in the impoverished El Alto slum outside La Paz, setting beds, televisions and chairs on fire and destroying as many as 50 establishments. Vigilantes have stormed the district three days running, complaining that it is a haven for criminals and that the bars there serve minors. They want local authorities to shut them down.

When he saw two men pry into his neighbor's house with a crowbar one afternoon earlier this month, Joe Horn did what many people would do: He called 911. But when police had not shown up by the time the suspects were about to leave, the 61-year-old retiree did something most people probably would not: He stepped outside with his 12-gauge shotgun and killed them.

A woman in a leopard-print halter top cuddles a kitten. She puts the little gray tabby on the ground. She lifts her foot and grinds the heel of her sparkly stiletto shoe into the terrified animal's eye and crushes its head. Her work done, she gazes into the distance smiling. The video images set the Internet on fire in China. Instead of just airing their outrage online, Web users decided to hunt down the kitten killer. But how do you find a nameless woman in a country of 1.3 billion? Easily.

They picked the wrong town. Arriving by van in this solidly indigenous city on the night of an annual festival, the gang may have thought that drunk, reveling townspeople would be easy marks. Residents said that in a series of attacks, the gang of 11, including five women, grabbed 30 victims on darkened streets and forced them into their vehicle, where they stripped, sexually assaulted and robbed the victims before local youths spread the alarm.

The video of the beating and sexual abuse of five young alleged thieves at the hands of vigilantes has provoked widespread outrage here. But in some quarters, there have been disquieting voices of approval. The video landed on YouTube. It shows the cowering teenage boys being slapped in the face and forced to French kiss one another. Each is forced to say that they are about to be raped as punishment for robbing houses. In the state of Nayarit, where the incident took place, many people suspect that the abusers might be police officers.

Teenagers stoned a 22-year-old man to death in southern Mexico because they believed he had stolen a cellphone and a bicycle from one of their friends, police said. Alejandro Lopez tried to flee when the teenagers approached, but he was cornered, police officer Jaime Sanchez said. Sanchez said the teenagers had fled by the time police found Lopez's body on the doorstep of a house. Police believe the teens, ages 14 to 16, belonged to a neighborhood gang in Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas state.