It was a cumulative contribution of cliches: a closed society, informally autonomous from the central government; a drunk driver with no license and a history of reckless behavior; a luxury car – a symbol of unassailable social power; early warning signs and a timely report to the police from a concerned citizen hours before the accident; police negligence; crime and death. In well-ordered societies, when we talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time, we think of a lightning strike – not of a tragedy that was clearly foreseeable. What happened in Hania, Crete, was not the result of some random misfortune, but of a silent choice. The 22-year-old killed in the entirely predictable traffic accident, caused by a driver who had repeatedly shown an apparent readiness to kill, is, on one level, a victim of the 45-year-old driver. On another level, he is a victim of a system – social, legal and state-run – that has decided the rights of potential criminals to engage in dangerous behavior are more important than the right of others to simply exist. Any further analysis seems redundant: The 45-year-old was driving under the influence, the police were alerted by a concerned citizen, they identified his repeated offenses, yet they let him go free to kill. Perhaps out of naive, unprofessional stupidity, they believed he wouldn’t follow through. Or perhaps they didn’t care at all.
Inward turn
This situation is not exclusive to rural areas (whether referring to towns distant from the metropolis or traditionally village-like communities). It also happens in societies that fold in on themselves, where the law is replaced by public relations, arbitrary community codes (“This is how we do things here”), and the cunningness of cowardly leniency (“Let’s stay on good terms with so-and-so – he’s important, rich, powerful, famous etc”). The 45-year-old who, just before the fatal accident, had bullied yet another citizen and then treated the police check as a trivial formality, did not act out of some superhuman courage, but because he could. In societies where rules are applied based on the privilege of those breaking them – where popularity in the public square, the bar or the bouzouki clubs influences local officials – dangerous individuals interpret their recklessness as an inalienable right (they don’t even recognize it as danger, but as a legitimate lifestyle). Any attempt to impose restrictions on them is inherently unacceptable. This is why the 45-year-old, earlier that evening, felt emboldened to insult another driver, who later reported him to the police. Any suggestion that his bravado was misplaced felt utterly intolerable to him.
By order of the PM
The dismantling of the Hania Police Directorate “by order of the prime minister” is open to two interpretations. Some will applaud Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ “quick reflexes” and “sensitivity” – those far removed from the problem, concerned primarily about its dramatic resolution, and only secondarily about its root causes. Others will see the prime ministerial order as part of a larger issue. The fact that the police directorate’s failure required intervention from the highest levels of power reveals just how entrenched and normalized the dysfunction had become. This means not only that the police mishandled their duties in the worst possible way, but that all the intermediary authorities between them and the prime minister failed miserably as well. If the prime minister’s intervention means anything, it is an acknowledgment of state decay. A top-down order should not be a cause for celebration; it raises a more important question: What are the chances of being saved from the next police-protected criminal if we must rely on the prime minister to intervene?