The police’s dilatory response to a minor case exemplifies our national sclerosis
On 26 October 2022, my friends who are in their early 80s — let’s call them Mr and Mrs C — were standing in the narrow drive leading to their house in Devon while talking to a young man. A car started down the drive, and far from slowing as it approached, it accelerated hard towards them, pulling up with a skid about three feet in front of them. Naturally, they were very shaken by this.
They were even more shaken when the driver, a man in his 30s previously unknown to them, replied, when Mr C told him how he had frightened them to death, that that had his intention and that it had been a joke. “I hope you’re sorry,” said Mr C. To which he replied that he was not, and he drove away.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Critic
______________________
Theodore Dalrymple is a contributing editor of City Journal and a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Photo by kali9/iStock