I’m outraged that Jordan Neely is dead. He didn’t have to die. There was no reason he had to die. He may have been very verbally upsetting, but he was a danger to no one. He was a mentally ill man in the throes of his mental illness—that’s all. At other times, in fact, he had been very much liked and appreciated for his Michael Jackson imitations, where he had done Jackson’s famous Moonwalk, to the delight of passers-by, who rewarded him with tips. But on this particular day, May 1, 2023, his schizophrenia and PTSD had gotten the better of him, and so there he was, on a New York City subway train screaming at the top of his lungs some very disturbing things, which surely were upsetting to his fellow passengers, but he was keeping his verbal hostility to merely acting it out orally, and not assaulting anyone. The only provocative activity Neely is accused of is throwing his jacket on the subway floor in a very dramatic way. Passenger Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old ex-Marine, took him to the floor in a chokehold that lasted for 15 minutes. As an ex-Marine, Penny surely knew that a 15-minute chokehold was bound to be lethal for Neely—yet he persisted in it anyway. Penny hollowly claims “self-defense,” but the online forum Reluctant Habits calls it more accurately, calling Penny “sociopathic,” “murderous,” someone with a “sick smirk,” and a “thug.” [On May 11, Penny was charged with secondary manslaughter. As of May 13, thanks to an endorsement from DeSantis, Penny’s Go Fund Me legal defense account had raised $1 million--GF.]
Neely was, of course, black. Penny is white. Many white people have a deathly fear of
being victims of black-on-white crime, but really, how often do we, as both a
society and as individuals, talk about white-on-black crime? Such as the murder of Emmett Till (the white
woman who lied about teenage Till making a pass at her died recently—of old
age)? Or Minneapolis police officer
Derrick Chauvin murdering George Floyd?
Or Breonna Taylor shot in bed by Louisville cops based on an erroneous
search warrant? Or, needless to say, all
the “Strange Fruit” lynchings of black people in the South by the Ku Klux Klan
and other white segregationist terrorists?
But these only start the list!
Media coverage of this atrocity has
been fairly extensive, especially since Penny was named as suspect when the
coroner ruled “homicide” as cause of Neely’s death. I’ve read the details in three online
sources: in addition to the Reluctant
Habits blog site mentioned above, there was a detailed story in the online
Intelligencer of New York magazine on May 5 (updated on May 7), and a May
6 story by NBC News. The Intelligencer
story featured a longish video of Penny holding Neely in a chokehold, a
disturbing video to say the least, as Neely’s legs are flailing, then go limp.
In the wake of this, both New York
City Mayor Eric Adams, a law-and-order ex-cop, and New York Governor Kathy
Hochul both issued mealy-mouthed statements in the face of indignation over Neely’s
death, admonishing people to merely stay calm while the investigation
proceeded. Neely was homeless at the
time of his death, had been arrested several times, and had warrants
outstanding—but he really died as a “mentally ill” person once again allowed to
fall through the cracks of a callous and unresponsive mental health system. (According to the societal conventional
wisdom, the mentally ill “bring it on themselves,” most conveniently “blaming
the victim” for whatever happens to them.)
Ironically, it was Adams himself who had proposed rounding up New York
City’s homeless mentally ill and putting them in treatment! Which never happened, of course, and isn’t
happening now. But grandstanding on “mental
illness” and proposing toughlove actions sells well to voters. Even when nothing of substance happens. Truly, the way we treat mental illness in
society today, especially those without residences, insurance, or money, is
insane. And horribly, unconscionably,
victimizing.
No comments:
Post a Comment