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Nicole Gelinas

Opinion

By Nicole Gelinas

May 4, 2023 | 3:57pm

Its good that New Yorks progressive elected officials and transit advocates are outraged by Jordan Neelys killing on a Manhattan subway train Monday.

Neelys life mattered and so did the lives of the 27 other people violently killed on the subway since March 2020.

Where was the progressive outrage then?

It might have prevented the latest death.

Monday afternoon, Neely, 30, was menacing people on an F train in Lower Manhattan, according to witnesses, when another passenger put him in a chokehold.

The medical examiner has ruled the death a homicide.

Its up to police and prosecutors and, if it comes to that, a jury to determine whether this killing was justified self-defense or just another subway murder.

Our progressive pols arent willing to wait.

Jordan Neely was murdered, concluded AOC, because he was crying for food. People experiencing homelessness, mental illness, hunger, and frustration need and deserve compassion, not force, tweeted city councilwoman Tiffany Caban.

Does the Mayor, Governor, or any high-ranking MTA official plan to say anything about Jordan Neelys killing today? asked the author of a popular subway blog.

Its good that the progressives are finally interested in a subway killing.

But before Neelys death, from March 2020 until early April, 27 people lost their lives to murder in the subway, many of them, like Neely, were homeless young people.

Before 2019, it took 15 years for New York to rack up 28 murders on the subway, not three.

Where were AOC and Caban when homeless soccer player Akeem Loney, 32, was murdered by a stranger as he slept on the subway, in November 2021?

Where were they when Claudine Roberts, 44, also sleeping on the subway, was fatally knifed by a stranger earlier that year?

Jordan Neely, 30, a homeless man, was strangled aboard a northbound F train just before 2:30 p.m. on May 1, according to police.

He reportedly started acting erratically on the train and harassing other passengers before being restrained and ultimately choked by a straphanger, identified as a 24-year-old Marine from Queens.

The Marine, who was seen on video applying the chokehold, was taken into custody and later released but the DA is mulling charges, which could include involuntary manslaughter, according to experts.

The city medical examiner ruled Neelys death a homicide, noting he died due to compression of neck (chokehold). This will be weighed during the investigation into whether charges will be brought for Neelys death.

Neelys aunt told The Post that he became a complete mess following the brutal murder of his mother in 2007. She noted he was schizophrenic while suffering from PTSD and depression.

The whole system just failed him. He fell through the cracks of the system, Carolyn Neely said.

Law enforcement sources said Neely had numerous arrests on his record, including for drugs, disorderly conduct, and fare beating.

At the time of his death, Neely had a warrant out for his arrest for a November 2021 case in which he was accused of assaulting a 67-year-old woman in the East Village, the sources said.

Mayor Eric Adams has said its important for the DA to complete the investigation into Neelys death and not rush to conclusions.

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Oh, yes Caban, even as four people were killed within a month last fall on the subway, including a union steamfitter and a Citi Field worker separately on their way home from work, was dismissing concerns about subway violence, calling it a one-in-a-million event.

In some recent cases, perpetrators have claimed self-defense, perhaps spuriously.

Just in April, an attacker killed 18-year-old Isaiah Collazo aboard a Brooklyn train after Collazos friend pulled the emergency brake, sparking a dispute; the attackers Legal Aid lawyer claims the dispute escalated to the point where he had to defend himself.

Similarly, last fall, the man who allegedly pushed Heriberto Quintana to his death under a Jackson Heights train claimed the move, during a fight, was defensive.

Because, in the latest case, Neely was black and the alleged perpetrator appears to be white, the progressives are all now screaming Bernie Goetz, after the illegally armed man who shot and wounded four people menacing him on the subway in 1984.

We cannot end up back to a place where vigilantism is tolerable, Al Sharpton says.

Actually, the Goetz incident wasnt that unusual. Self-defense, or the claim of it, was common in the 1970s, 1980s, and early-1990s high-crime subways.

In 1979, a 63-year-old man stabbed and killed a 23-year-old who, he said, had tried to rob him.

In 1990, two people died in alleged subway self-defense incidents.

Just like in the latest case, the press and pols only found Goetz interesting because he was white, and his assailants were not.

What kept killings, including purported self-defense killings, on the subways low after the early 1990s? Low crime.

In 1990, with 26 murders on the subway, riders were on edge.

That was the year Bill Bratton launched broken-windows policing underground, stopping low crimes before they became big ones, and crime fell.

By 2019, with one or two killings a year on the subways, riders felt safe.

But now, with killings back up to double-digit numbers annually last year for the first time since the early 1990s, people are scared again.

Neely, with a long history of disorderly and violent behavior, is just the latest example of a trend weve seen for three years: disorder escalates.

Whether Neelys death was justified or not is less important than whether we could have prevented it.

Yes, we could have, by keeping subways as safe as they were in 2019.

Ensuring order on the subway means that Neely wouldnt have been able to act in a way that made people scared; it also makes it less likely that a fellow passenger would react in the same way to feeling scared.

Violent subway crime, though lower than it was during last years horrific fall, is still 28% higher than it was in 2019.

Progressives needed to care about all subway victims to save the one who, sadly, fit their desired narrative of vigilantism.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattans Institutes City Journal.

https://nypost.com/2023/05/04/where-was-the-progressive-outrage-when-27-others-were-killed-on-the-subway/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons

Read more:
Jordan Neely matters but where were progressives when 27 others were killed on the subway? - New York Post