MEXICO CITY (AP) - Family and friends of a man injured in a car wreck with a police officer briefly took four officers hostage Saturday, releasing them after authorities promised to pay for medical expenses.
About 60 residents in a community on the southern outskirts of the Mexican capital surrounded three police patrol vehicles, protesting the handling of the car wreck earlier in the week, said Victor Palma, a spokesman for the police department.
The crash involved vehicles driven by a city police officer and a 20-year-old San Bartolome resident, who lost an eye in collision.
His family and friends released the four police hostages within hours after authorities arranged to pay for medical expenses in the wreck.
The confrontation came amid heightened concerns regarding vigilante justice in Mexico, where police are seen as inept or corrupt and people say they must take security into their own hands.
In November, an angry crowd burned alive two plainclothes federal agents and injured a third in the southern reaches of Mexico City. The killings were captured on live television long before riot police arrived.
President Vicente Fox responded by firing Mexico City's police chief and a top federal law official, blaming the capital city's government for tolerating vigilantism.
Earlier this month a police officer was killed by a mob in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca after allegedly shooting a taxi driver in a bar.
