Premature Prosecution
I happened across this story on the BBC’s website. It’s ostensibly about nudist’s family disregarding his last wish to be buried unclothed, but I found this passage most telling:
Brenda Loete said she never spoke to Norton despite living next door to him for more than a decade.
“We didn’t really know him. We just had him arrested,” she said.
So over the course of ten years of living next door to someone with whom you disagree, you couldn’t be bothered to talk to the man? I can understand that he made you uncomfortable, but as neighbors, maybe you could have worked out an arrangement whereby he wouldn’t go about nude in his yard at agreeable times of the day so that your kids could play outside, or when you wanted to have friends over for a barbecue. You could even have tried to work this out by telephone, so that you wouldn’t have had to look at him while you talked.
When the police are the first—and only—means you try to solve a nonviolent dispute, I have absolutely no sympathy for you.
