Other planned subjects might beckon. However, fresh news can demand a rearrangement of writing priorities. This is especially so when the mainstream media banishes the item to the back page even though the occurrence is of importance. At times such underrated news items are interchangeable. Often such cases are not unique. The same event, albeit with changed details, is likely to emerge in other locations. If this is the case, we might have to do with a duplication that is not accidental. It is likely that we are looking at something that is descriptive of the strength or weaknesses of the civilization which produced the event. Therefore, if an incident happens in many places then it might be significant even if, in itself, the matter appears to be local and therefore trivial. If an underlying base below the small visible peaks of icebergs can be found, then not the little protrusions but the connecting mass below them are the real story. Ultimately, every image on the screen is the sum of small and in themselves obscure dots. The happenings referred to here are comparable to such specs: it is their totality that amount to the picture.

What has happened? Unfortunately, nothing unusual. The more so if repetition is allowed to make an outrage shrink into an accepted – and thereby to-be-repeated – deed. The fact around which this piece is wrapped is unfortunately something we are used to. Perhaps we should ask ourselves, “if we are, should we?” The action of a District Attorney suggests that the politically incorrect answer might be “not quite.”

If you forgot the bit about the dots and expect to encounter an official sensation fit for the front pages in LA, London, or Paris, then you might want to stop reading here. This scandal whose essentials are common place came about in Switzerland. That is the country where, by public acclamation, besides the grunts of the “gnomes of Zürich,” nothing ever is supposed to happen.

Now, to the facts. It all starts with a criminally insane person. He has a record that is as long as is the belt of a sumo wrestler. Add here a psychiatric evaluation. It rates the man to be violently anti-social, criminally insane, and incurably violent. On the basis of this an appellate court finds that the man is to be taken into protective prophylactic custody. For reasons that are still unclear, this court order, predating a new crime by three weeks, was not carried out.

Meanwhile, the man is again in custody. Now the tragedy can unfold with the generous contribution of a local court’s judge and a kind psychiatrist.

Against the wishes of a closed institution, the detainee gets to see a new psychiatrist whose findings are presented to a lower court judge. Astonishingly (due to the need to protect privacy and in the pursuit of fairness?) neither the shrink or the judge have knowledge of the earlier assessment and the judgment based upon it.

This is how it could happen that after one session the analyst concluded that the patient is “extremely polite.” Given this cordiality the expert was not under the impression that the man “would take a knife and attack someone.” This being the case, the judge ordered that the prisoner be let go. His freedom lasted nine days. Then the nice guy took a knife and stabbed a taxi-driver to death.

Apparently the dead man became a victim of a psychiatrist who was inclined to think that the patient’s record was irrelevant. Should we not put the past behind us? Misbehavior is no more than a reaction to the failure of society and the impostor’s “disadvantaging” milieu. In the case of the judge it would seem that the “rights” of a concrete suspect was rated to be as important as the interests of an abstract society. Add a dosage of attempted fairness – no one’s past should be held against him – and a smack of lacking information. Embellish the concoction with some rose-tinted vision and the essentials of the drama are complete.

Stories similar to the one just sketched are common place. The unique part follows. Some readers might agree that the next act represents a “good idea” that deserves to be imitated.

Enter a DA who is outraged by the outrageous and has some moral fortitude. He has an advantage backing him up. The case reminds people here of an event that is still unforgotten. It is the murder of a girl by a convicted killer on “home leave.”

As a result of the omissions and commissions leading to the demise of the cabby, there is now an ongoing investigation. It is to determine whether six individuals involved in the drama should be tried for involuntary manslaughter.

Whether the case will expire before it can move beyond the initial investigation is uncertain. It is not unlikely that the matter will be discreetly “taken care of.” Switzerland’s ruling parties, while fighting each other for votes, have a mutually advantageous arrangement. Lucrative jobs are proportionally divided among their clients. Furthermore, certain problems that arise when political or bureaucratic power is misused, tend to get favorable treatment by commissions created to investigate them. Nevertheless, holding those who have society’s power delegated to them accountable for the misuse of their position is a laudable. State power vested in bureaus set up to regulate us is being extended by the apparatchiks that man the desks. Anything that counteracts the trend to use “the office” like mediaeval knights their fiefdoms, is praiseworthy. This makes the outrageously good idea worth copying.