For an example. one time my family and I were out at night in a medium-size city in Switzerland, when we came across a person in obvious distress, lying on the ground. Several people were standing around. My Swiss wife went to call for help, but what was she told? The police immediately questioned her last name, which was not typically Swiss. “Who are you and why are you calling?” It was in a questionable area of town, and they had no interest in responding to a call for help. We got out of there and don’t know if an ambulance ever arrived. How different than in America!
I have also been in Place de Republique in Paris, a huge tourist site, after dark, when it is hideously transformed into a repository for every kind of vice. Utterly shocked, I got out of there as fast as I could. Why were the police so impotent that they were unable to guarantee the safety of this major tourist destination after dark? To me, is speaks of something very disturbing about the European sense of morality.