Playing with Fire

By Noah Rothman

Friday, May 05, 2023

 

Jordan Neely, a homeless man reportedly exhibiting outward signs of mental illness and menacing passengers, should not have been on the F train on Monday afternoon. The Marine veteran who subdued him with the assistance of his fellow passengers shouldn’t have been in that position. The application of force that resulted in Neely’s death shouldn’t have had to occur. But it did.

 

The progressive-activist class, which so often deflects prudential questions of public safety by invoking grander theoretical questions about root causes, is trying to make this tragedy into a morality play with all the familiar victims and bad actors. They want a national scandal, and they will get one. But it is unlikely to play out like the activists think it will.

 

The facts of the case, insofar as they are known, paint a grimly familiar portrait. At 2:27 p.m. on May 1, 911 began receiving calls about threats being made by a passenger. Callers soon reported that this menacing passenger was armed, that a fight had broken out, and that an assault was in progress. “Witnesses told detectives Neely came onto the subway, threw his jacket on the floor, and began screaming and yelling aggressively, pacing up and down the train car,” a local ABC News outlet reported. “Other witnesses told police that Neely became increasingly hostile and began throwing trash.” Neely alleged that he had no access to food or water, and he hoped to either go to jail or die. At roughly this point, Neely was jumped and detained by his fellow passengers, but the compression applied to his neck in this effort proved fatal.

 

So far, the activist Left’s reaction to this event has followed a predictable pattern, and the cues they’ve sent the national press and prominent Democratic officials have been dutifully followed.

 

The New York Daily News interviewed Neely’s crestfallen father, who recalled “the light in his little boy’s eyes” when his son began performing to music — a proclivity he took with him to adulthood as a street performer. The autism from which he suffered and his refusal to take his prescribed medications reportedly “prevented Neely from finding steady work.” Neely will be “remembered as an entertainer,” CNN reported. A friend “described Neely as a kind and sweet soul.” And though the acquaintance hadn’t seen the victim since 2016, their “circle” was crushed by the news of Neely’s death. The Guardian led with the news that Neely “had a fan club” and was regarded as “a talented dancer.”

 

An inverted victimization narrative was soon adopted by the political class. “Jordan Neely was murdered,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez insisted with characteristic self-confidence. He was “homeless and crying for food,” she said, abstracting his death into Marxian dialectic in which “existing power structures” were to blame. When New York City mayor Eric Adams urged caution in lieu of the facts “we don’t know” and noted that “serious mental health issues” are “in play here,” Ocasio-Cortez leapt down his throat, calling Neely’s death a “public execution.”

 

New York governor Kathy Hochul followed AOC’s lead. Subway riders should have known who Neely was, she claimed, and they should have been familiar with his episodic bouts of mania. The governor added that Neely was only “killed for being a passenger on the subway trains.” These callous remarks were outdone by the governor’s fellow Democrats. Yet “another Black man publicly executed,” Representative Jamaal Bowman posited. New York City comptroller Brand Lander deemed the event “vigilantism.” State senator Jabari Brisport went farther still. “Jordan Neely was lynched,” he tweeted. “[T]hey killed him” only because Neely “had the audacity to publicly yell about” the “massive injustice” done to him by the system.

 

None of these powerful representatives of that same system recognize the incongruity of their agitation against it. But coherence is beside the point. Their goal was to generate street action — the familiar sort that had shaken loose so much experimentation with lax law-enforcement policies in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. And their calls to action were heeded.

 

Chanting “you can’t stop the revolution,” a reliable contingent of demonstrators bearing the “black liberation flag” marched through Brooklyn. “Dozens” reportedly gathered at the subway platform near to where the altercation occurred insisting that “homeless lives matter.” Tens of demonstrators coursed down Broome Street under police escort, where some of them attempted to engage in property destruction and provoke a more violent response from law enforcement.

 

But that relatively meager display was all that the combined efforts of the activism industrial complex could muster. Despite the unanimous verdict rendered by virtually every mainstream-news outlet, much of the progressive political class, and professional fomenters from the Reverend Al Sharpton to the New York ACLU, New Yorkers stayed away.

 

If New Yorkers were as familiar with Neely as Hochul dubiously claims, they might have known that he had a documented history of mental illness and a criminal background, including no fewer than 44 prior arrests. They might have also known that he had a history of unprovoked violence. But New Yorkers do not have to be familiar with this individual’s sprawling portfolio to understand that the subways have become intolerably dangerous, and no one is going to do anything about it.

 

New Yorkers know that the ballooning population of vagrants has become increasingly menacing. They know mental disturbances are common in this population, as social services and housing are readily available to of those sound enough mind to seek help. They know that violent, random assaults and even murders occur with disturbing regularity. They know that their elected leaders are aware of how dangerous the subways have become, or they would not have authorized a significantly augmented underground police presence earlier this year. Indeed, public-transit experts have warned that encouraging women, in particular, to overcome their fear of what lurks in the catacombs is key to restoring pre-pandemic ridership rates. They know crime has become New Yorkers’ No. 1 priority by a mile, and not because there’s too little of it.

 

They know all this not just because it has been their personal experience; they know it from reading the news — reports that media professionals have chosen to ignore now that the progressive hive mind requires them to adopt a convenient amnesia.

 

Today, progressive activists insist upon criminal charges for the person responsible for Jordan Neely’s homicide — charges that may extend to the passengers who assisted in subduing their tormentor. But the Left should be careful about what they wish for.

 

Commuters are not conflict-prone. They tend to keep their heads down. New Yorkers, in particular, are not known for their eagerness to engage in a potentially fatal encounter with the ubiquitous homeless. These subway riders were forced into that course of action — not just by Neely’s conduct, but by a city that has conveyed to them in no uncertain terms that they are on their own. The press and the political class evince no sympathy for their plight, but they gush with empathy for the mentally infirmed and voluntarily “unhoused” who are making daily life in urban America an untenable prospect.

 

Today, the progressive Left is busily engineering a backlash, and they may get what they want. But the reaction they hope to inspire may be dwarfed by the counter-reaction — a simmering populist frustration with tolerance for violent criminality that the electoral process is incapable of addressing. The votes of the law-abiding and besieged don’t seem to count. So, one subway car took matters into their own hands.

 

The Left wants to make those New Yorkers into martyrs. They may come to regret it.