iStockphoto / Warner Bros.
Batman next to a Mexican flag
A number of popular comic book series revolve around vigilantes who got fed up with crime and decided to take matters into their own hands. That includes Batman, who has lent his name to the moniker given to whoever is tracking down motorcycle thieves in Mexico and duct-taping them to poles.
There are plenty of fictional comic book characters who are united by a similar origin story: one that revolves around a crime-ridden city where the police are overwhelmed or can’t be trusted to the point where our hero decides to take to the streets and dish out some extrajudicial justice.
That lengthy list of vigilantes includes Batman, the persona adopted by Bruce Wayne after he made it his mission to avenge his parents’ murder and devote his life to battling the rogues’ gallery of supervillains and deranged criminals who make Gotham City a pretty miserable place to live.
It’s hard to describe any superhero as “relatable,” and that’s certainly the case when you’re talking about a billionaire with a wide array of gadgets and vehicles at his disposal in his never-ending quest to conquer evil. With that said, he is able to do his job without any of the superpowers the likes of Superman and Spider-Man are able to take advantage of, which makes him a relatively normal guy in comparison.
It goes without saying that trying to fight crime under the cover of night is much easier said than done in real life, but police in Mexico are currently trying to track down someone (or multiple people) who’s seemingly held their own on that front in recent weeks.
Police in Mexico are hunting for a “Mexican Batman” who has made it their mission to fight back against thieves
According to The Telegraph, police in the Mexican city of Lagos de Moreno (located in the western part of Jalisco) have been dealing with a string of incidents that first began to unfold on June 13th, which is when they discovered a man duct-taped to a light pole next to a sign that accused him of being a thief.
He was the first of five people who have since been discovered in a similarly sticky situation. It appears the vigilante, who a local journalist dubbed the “Batman of Lagos de Moreno,” is going after thieves who have stolen motorcycles, and those bikes have repeatedly been parked next to the duct-taped men, some of whom have been discovered with “visible cuts, bruises and bloodied faces.”
🇲🇽 Mexico now has its own “Batman”: He hunts motorcycle thieves at night and duct-tapes them to poles
In Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco state, five men have already been found tied to lampposts. Some had their mouths taped, showed signs of beating, and stolen motorcycles were left… pic.twitter.com/JU3shOGH9s
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) June 27, 2026
It is unclear who is responsible, but it is pretty obvious what the driving factor is when you consider the alleged criminals have repeatedly been found next to signs describing their supposed misdeeds and the Spanish word for “thief” written on their foreheads.
It appears this could be the work of multiple vigilantes when you consider one of the incidents involved two people taped to the same pole, and that would seem to be the case when you consider police (who stressed the people found taped up were victims regardless of the veracity of the allegations against them) say they have identified “two vehicles believed to be connected to the incidents.”
However, no suspects have been identified nor any arrests made as they continue to hunt for the culprit(s).