Said Gregory Umbach, associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, quoted in "After homeless man choked on subway, NYC grapples with treatment of mentally ill" (WaPo).
The incident makes me think of Bernhard Goetz, and reading on, I see he's briefly mentioned in the article:One of the most famous incidents occurred in 1984, when Bernhard Goetz, a White man, shot four Black teenagers he said he believed were going to rob him. Goetz became a folk hero in a city dealing with sky-high crime. The media called him the “Subway Vigilante.”...
It would be good to say more about why he became a folk hero. It is, I think, evidence of how oppressed ordinary people felt about what they had been forced to endure on the subway — or felt forced to endure. Goetz represented the idea of somehow fighting for your right to be left alone in this public space.
But the Goetz case was different. The young men he shot were simply criminals, robbers, on the subway to find victims. Neely was, it seems, mentally ill and on the subway for shelter.
More about the Goetz case at Wikipedia:
Supporters viewed Goetz as a hero for standing up to his attackers and defending himself in an environment where the police were increasingly viewed as ineffective in combating crime.... Harvard Professor of Government James Q. Wilson explained the broad sentiment by saying, "It may simply indicate that there are no more liberals on the crime and law-and-order issue in New York City, because they've all been mugged."
Professor Stephen L. Carter bemoaned the public's initial reaction to the shooting, arguing, "The tragedy of the Goetz case is that a public barely aware of the facts was rooting for him to get away with it. The tragedy is that a public eager to identify transgressors in advance decided from the start that Mr. Goetz was a hero and that his [B]lack victims deserved what they got."...
United States Attorney Rudolph Giuliani met with Black political and religious leaders calling for a Federal civil-rights investigations.... After an investigation, Giuliani ultimately determined that Goetz had acted out of fear, which he distinguished from a "racial motivation."....
Goetz achieved celebrity status after the shooting. In 2001, he unsuccessfully ran for mayor of New York City; amongst other issues, Goetz advocated for a vegetarian menu in New York City schools, jails, and hospitals....
The shooting partially inspired the 2019 film Joker, whose depiction of the Joker is partially based on Goetz....
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101 comments:
Wasn’t the Goetz case the inspiration for all those Charles Bronson movies where he played the character Jerome Kerzey?
"The young men he shot were simply criminals, robbers, on the subway to find victims. Neely was, it seems, mentally ill and on the subway for shelter. "
But the threat of physical harm can be the same. Mentally ill people can be unpredictably violent, e.g. shoving someone off the subway platform.
I remember the Goetz incident. He was no hero. He was more of a Charles Bronson wannabe.
"Goetz represented the idea of somehow fighting for your right to be left alone in this public space."
Your right to be left alone. The objective of the Framers - getting government (as the proxy for leftists) to leave us alone.
Professor Stephen Carter talks like someone who doesn’t spend much time on the subway. Perhaps he should put more effort into staying out of discussions he doesn’t know anything about.
Associate Professor Umbach summarized the issue well. Someone promote him, give him a stipend, and let him continue toward a solution.
But the Goetz case was different. The young men he shot were simply criminals, robbers, on the subway to find victims. Neely was, it seems, mentally ill and on the subway for shelter.
Neely wasn’t robbing people, like the muggers in the Goetz case. He was threatening people’s lives. That make Neely the more dangerous.
"The world would be a much much better place if bad people knew they had a fight coming every single time they tried to start some shit."
- John Milius
@ Begley
The first Death Wish Movie came out in 1974. It was based on a popular novel of the same name.
From 2013: "Try to stay away from the Michael Jackson impersonator if you see him…
Used to be all cool, dancing to MJ in the subway train, but as of late he’s become a maniac."
https://www.revolver.news/2023/05/ten-year-old-viral-reddit-thread-foreshadowed-the-michael-jackson-subway-psycho-incident-reddit-will-flush-this-one-asap/
A known wolf, years in the making. I rode the NY subway a few times. Riding in an enclosed steel tube with no escape route will not be on my itinerary - ever. The maniacs know the serfs are unarmed and helpless, unless one runs into a former marine.
"Wasn’t the Goetz case the inspiration for all those Charles Bronson movies where he played the character Jerome Kerzey?"
"Death Wish" came out 10 years before Goetz shot those guys. And the character's name was Paul Kersey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Wish_(1974_film)
Neely's case demonstrates the need to do something effective to help mentally ill people or at least protect the public from them.
The Goetz situation shows the problem of crime out of control. What do you want to do about street criminals?
I'm not saying anything about who is more dangerous to the public. The way the cases are the same is that ordinary subway riders are put in continual danger and feel either hopeless or as though they might need to act, at long last.
Progressive politicians are interested in getting treatment for the mentally ill. The mentally ill are too useful for oppressing the populace. The progressive (neobarbarian) activists will use this recent case to castigate self defense. It was an obviously a racist act of a racist villain to oppress a Black brother! You can see the riots coming.
The busses and light rail cars in Seattle have become nothing more than moving crack dens. The homeless are everywhere and the politicians will do nothing to get them into treatment. In fact, the law does not allow for forced treatment. The homeless can walk out anytime. King County is buying up hotels/motels to house them in low barrier (drugs use permitted) rooms. The rooms then become contaminated with meth residue and must then be cleaned by hazmat crews.
Of the 59 people specifically named in the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire", Bernie is one of the four still alive: Bernie Goetz, Brigitte Bardot, Chubby Checker, and your favorite Bob Dylan.
Mentally ill is an increasingly common excuse used by the anti-incarceration activists and family members of offenders to justify criminal behavior. He was competent enough to cycle through the system scores of times and commit many, many individually organized crimes, surely many multiples of the 40 for which he was caught. Just because he was screaming doesn't prove he was mentally incompetent.
It may have just been a modus operandi that worked well for him many times before.
Every DA and judge who cut him loose those 40 times, but especially the one who did so after he attempted what should have been prosecuted as attempted murder of an elderly woman, should be fired or recalled.
The courts have destroyed society. Where are the consequences for these scum? For the elected officials who are soaked in their innocent constituents' blood?
Screw Stephen L. Carter. The Jussie Smollett of legal commentators. He and his peers don't suffer the subways.
If the government is either unwilling or unable to protect the public the public will take justice into its own hands.
The responsibility for Jordan Neely’s death lies with the people who thought that, after forty arrests, the best place for him was on on the streets.
Still no arrest? I would think a case could be made for trying Daniel Penny for manslaughter, and letting a jury decide. Apparently Jordan Neely was unarmed, and had not actually attacked anyone, with fists or otherwise. Cities all have their obnoxious screamers, and no doubt they sometimes turn dangerous. If a Marine is trained in using a chokehold, he should be trained in knowing the dangers of sustaining it.
Mayor Adams may be a good example of a black office-holder who wants to cheese it on the "eye for an eye" business. Doesn't the whole story reinforce the narrative that now is a good time to move to Florida? Before Covid, progressives were all for public transit and rabbit warren housing--not for themselves, of course, but for the vulgar. This utopian vision may be hard to sustain, especially if no one has a serious policy about mental illness, drugs, homelessness and crime.
It would be good to say more about why he became a folk hero.
I don't think the current style guide allows it.
Neely was, it seems, mentally ill and on the subway for shelter.
what did Neely's arrest record look like?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/jordan-neelys-criminal-record-man-killed-on-subway-had-42-prior-arrests/ar-AA1aIW22
42 arrests on charges including petty larceny, jumping subway turnstiles, theft, and three unprovoked assaults on women in the subway between 2019 and 2021.
a U.S. Marine veteran lying beneath Neely and holding him in a headlock position for several minutes as Neely unsuccessfully tried to break free. Another passenger pinned Neely's arms, while a third held down his shoulder.
This is a problem everywhere. The progs want us out of our cars and on public transport but you have this dysfunction, in NYC, LA, SF, Seattle...
Even in Missoula some guy was jerking it on one of our free buses.
The whole thing pisses me off because I used to take buses and subway all the time and it was great, especially San Francisco.
We used to be protected from this insanity.
"Neely's case demonstrates the need to do something effective to help mentally ill people or at least protect the public from them.
The Goetz situation shows the problem of crime out of control. What do you want to do about street criminals?"
The criminality problem is easy. Treat criminals harshly, publicly, and quickly. Essentially do everything our society isn't doing now.
The mentally ill is slightly more difficult but also easy. Mentally ill people become wards of the state, mostly permanently, as they do in almost every other country in the world. This would involve making an exception to our US cultural and legal notions of the "rights of the individual". In short, do the first part and then get rid of the ACLU.
Seriously, this country used to deal with our chronically mentally ill 99% just fine until someone decided that the mentally ill's freedom to live their public lives poorly was more important than the public's right to live their lives free from insanity. Yes...someone actually argued that an un-institutional insane life was better because it was free regardless of how ill a person might be.
In essence the argument is like a lawyer saying that a crippled amputee has a better quality of life free from crutches and a wheelchair because those things are confining, and that they're better off never moving again.
When the government fails in its basic duty to protect the citizens will act to protect themselves. Every time through out history.
"Wasn’t the Goetz case the inspiration for all those Charles Bronson movies where he played the character Jerome Kerzey?"
Death Wish starring Charles Bronson was based on the 1972 novel by Brian Garfield. Goetz shot his subway assailants in '84. It's almost certain that the Bronson film inspired Goetz in some way though.
Goetz wasn't a hero, but he was respected for being willing to say 'this far, and no more - I will not be a victim!' As all of us should, but fear to. He was threatened by predators, and he refused to be a willing victim. As an atheist, I can still say God bless him. Race had nothing to do with it, other than in the probabilistic sense that if someome was going to attack him, he would have been correct in assuming that they would be black. The same would have been true for a black man fearing for his safety, of course, but no one seems to care about black people when they are the victims of black criminals.
3-4 men acted to subdue Neely, as he was becoming more and more aggressive. He was threatening people. He wasn’t just there for shelter. How would anyone know what he was there for, anyway? The issue is what he actually did when there.
So.... all those arrests I've been reading about, those were arrests for using the subway for shelter?
Crime and homelessness is up. The courts and DAs are refusing to do anything other than release them on the streets.
What is the citizens to do? What are they to think?
In liberal states they will be prosecuted if they defend themselves by woke DAs at state and local levels.
In conservative states they will get the backing of the community (with exception of cities ran by liberal Democrats with woke DAs.)
The best one can do is VOTE OUT DEMOCRATS AT ALL LEVELS to send a message.
Take it or leave it. Will it happen? If enough regular citizens die from criminals and homeless nuts.. yea. But the body count will be high!
Thank God I live in Texas.
What I’m pretty sure I know: most homeless people here, and there’s huge overlap with homeless/mentally ill/drug addicted/drunk are much less probabilistically dangerous. There are deliberate criminals in the disorder and some dangerous homeless folks, sure, and there are psychotic episodes, of course. Often the best strategy is to avoid becoming the target of a psychotic episode. There are actually camps here in Seattle for different drugs: Fentanyl, Other opioids, meth. Junkies tend to stick together.
It’s a zoo here, and we’re all in it, and they are actively incentivized and a few are recruited to come to Seattle. The people who run the city are a bad joke, often from somewhere else, and so the disorder continues.
The Goetz 4 were robbers and thugs, likely looking for crimes of opportunity and maybe just people to fuck with and all had records I think (1 or 2 potentially with warrants and pending cases). They were on a warpath which usually ends in prison or shot etc. I don’t feel bad for them getting shot, though vigilante justice threatens the law and Goetz was wrong in some important ways. NYC is much more dangerous, where street thug and fresh out the joint gang leaders dominate some areas.
Both cities though, are like loading docks, and more open. Both are drainage areas for larger parts of the country/world for both the ambitious and the down and out, and both are mostly run by Leftists in a time of profound civil decay, political failure/corruption and likely deeper problems (I expect dangerous order to fill in the disorder).
I appreciate the cruel neutrality, but I don’t need to be reminded to scan the formerly more liberal publications and their predictable activist/radical takeover. That is...predictable...for merely holding certain principles.
Neely's case demonstrates the need to do something effective to help mentally ill people or at least protect the public from them.
There used to be involuntary commitment mental institutions. A misunderstood book _Asylums_ by sociologist Erving Goffman, which discovered that nobody in institutions does what the institution claims they do, i.e. everybody adjusts, led to their banning.
The book is still entertaining to read, as it's not about asylums but any institution at all. Like Catch-22 is not about the military really.
"I remember the Goetz incident. He was no hero. He was more of a Charles Bronson wannabe."
Yep, I remember, too. He had a grudge over a previous mugging and he was looking for an excuse to act out. Local news reports at the time quoted riders on the train who said the boys were walking through the car asking passengers for money, but they didn't describe the boys as being aggressive or trying to mug anyone. One of the boys asked Goetz for $5.00 and Goetz responded by drawing out and firing his gun at the boys. The tell that Goetz was acting out his own racial animus and desire for revenge for his prior mugging is that after having shot all four boys, he went to one and said "You seem to be doing all right, here’s another," and shot him a second time.
Most discussions of the incident fail to point out that by discharging his gun in a moving subway train, Goetz endangered all the other passengers on that car.
Some years later, I saw Goetz hailing a cab one evening on Canal Street outside ARGO Electronics, and he was carrying a bag of electronic parts.
The mentally ill shouldn't be punished for being ill. We as a society owe it to the sickest of us to offer help and a place to sleep.
To be fair, those young black robbers threatened to stab Goetz with a screwdriver. In a sane world what he did was in self defense. Maybe he should have shot the kid with the screwdriver and left it at that but he kept shooting, paralyzing one of them. That was his mistake, that and living in NYC.
Neely was NOT a criminal? Several dozen arrests for battery and other crimes says he was.
"Neely wasn’t robbing people, like the muggers in the Goetz case."
There are no accounts that the "muggers" (sic) in the Goetz case had robbed anyone on that train.
Now review the violently-insane Antifa folks who attacked Andy Ngo for reporting on Antifa's violent insanity. White on Asian violence.
Double standards? Triple standards? Octo standards?
As Glenn Reynolds likes to point out from time to time, cops exist to as much, and maybe more, to protect law breakers from mob justice as they do to protect the law abiding from law breakers. This especially applies to individuals with cognitive difficulties. It isn't perfect but has worked better than any system yet proposed by the 'defund the police' crowd.
Ann, you distinguish the Neely case from the Goetz case with 20/20 hindsight; with law school seminar objectivity; using facts that are emergent as subway riders confront the nutcases and robbers; facts hidden from them but essential if they are to differentiate between the nutcases and the robbers who enter their personal “danger zone” on the subway; a zone only millimeters deep at times? How can riders distinguish —quickly, effectively, appropriately— between the nutcase and the robber and the innocent intruder pushing past or stumbling into them? Their lives depend on getting it right: and the real outrage is that the authorities have abandoned them: charged them the fare and then left them to endure the squalor and terror of these confrontations, and *risk their lives and freedom* if they don’t get it right.
Today's Democrats seem to feel that it's a virtue to allow the homeless, the mentally ill, and even criminals to roam free range pretty much everywhere, public or private. And any citizen who tries to protect himself, his family, or his property is immediately characterized as the criminal.
This problem could be solved pretty quickly if public officials were no longer allowed to have security details and were required to take public transportation to work and take their proportional share of city tent encampments next to their residence.
Neely was restrained because he posed an immediate and forward-looking risk to the passengers. Like George Floyd, his abortion was caused by a preexisting progressive condition (e.g. Fentanyl-poisoning). ChatWaPo is spreading diversity rumors to stoke genocidal fears in order to justify progress of the fascist State (e.g. Xhosa vs Zulu with native collateral damage).
Unfortunately for the riders of the subway most of them voted to feel threatened.
Unfortunately for all of us the current psychiatric profession is not trustworthy to be given the power to commit people. Maybe they never were. They did come up with such fine therapies as Lobotomy.
The riders ‘deserve’..the mentally ill ‘deserve’…,”Deserves got nothing to do with it.” William Muny
"Mr and Mrs Smith I am sorry to tell you that your daughter was killed while riding the subway. But perhaps you will be glad and relieved to know that she was not killed by a criminal but by a mentally ill person who like to pretend he is Michael Jackson and has been arrested 44 times for threatening persons on the subway"
Many people in my community (Los Angeles) have an instinctive sense that we are approaching some sort of limit on how much antisocial, asocial, and generally parasitic behavior we can sustain without fundamentally changing into fortresses. Half the houses on my block were burglarized in the last 18 months, typically by teams of burglars. Everyone now pays for a private security service and has installed cameras and alarms. Open lawns are now increasingly relandscaped with barrier hedges or walls. The physical membrane between middle class life and predation has been pierced.
Yet most of the people who stay are still voting for more of the same. I wish I was more eloquent and persuasive in speaking to my neighbors. There are still people with those "we believe in science" and "love is love" signs on their now gated lawns, festooned with private security company warning emblems.
The cowardice and stupidity are still strong. As is the cognitive dissonance.
"And the mentally ill deserve to have the treatment and the protection...that would allow them to work out their struggles in the protected space."
Correct. But that requires identifying them, seizing, them and locking them up against their "will." Example: should fentanyl addict George Floyd have been out and about at all?
"We can’t have a subway system that’s both a system of transportation and housing for the homeless. Those are incompatible goals."
But progs have already chosen sides and made homeless coddling the more important goal. So, no incompatibility.
"at least protect the public from them"
But progs want the fear and disorder. Safety is secondary.
"The Goetz situation shows the problem of crime out of control. What do you want to do about street criminals?"
Lock them up, move them out. That's deplorable heresy, of course.
"The way the cases are the same is that ordinary subway riders are put in continual danger and feel either hopeless or as though they might need to act, at long last."
Hopelessness is induced by prog PTB. Acting to resist will be punished.
Goetz did society a favor that day. Only idiots didn't understand that.
Look at photos and videos of the real New York in the '60s and '70s.
It was fucking grim...
'Neely's case demonstrates the need to do something effective to help mentally ill people or at least protect the public from them.'
Why are we spending millions on free drugs/drug paraphernalia/housing/food for the mentally ill instead of psychiatric services?
I ride public transportation in the Bay Area and it is a crap shoot.
Just a taste of actual NY official reaction:
"While the exact details of what led up to the encounter are not yet clear, we know enough to say with confidence that Neely did not die just “for being a passenger” on the subway, as New York governor Kathy Hochul claimed Thursday. Nor was it “very clear that he was not going to, you know, cause harm to these other people,” as Hochul went on to argue.
Perhaps the governor can be forgiven for not understanding how the average subway passenger tends to behave, given her upbringing in Buffalo. But at least Hochul supports Mayor Eric Adams’s plan to make it easier to involuntarily commit mentally ill homeless people who pose a threat to themselves or others — the kind of plan that, had it been in effect, may very well have taken Neely off the streets, sparing his life and sparing the man who subdued him a possible murder charge and a lifetime of guilt.
The other New York progressives who are busy crafting a simple morality tale about how and why Neely died — Public Advocate Juumane Williams, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and City Comptroller Brad Lander — have all spoken out against Adams’s effort, viewing any degree of coercion in dealing with mentally ill homeless people as fundamentally unjust."
"I remember the Goetz incident. He was no hero. He was more of a Charles Bronson wannabe."
You remember it wrong.
Where's Bernie Goetz when ya really need him?
So, both cases were the same (i.e. present and forward-looking risk) from the perspective of the people present.
"Riders on the subway deserve to have a ride where they don’t feel threatened. And the mentally ill deserve to have the treatment and the protection...that would allow them to work out their struggles in the protected space."
So - just raise the price of a subway ticket sufficient to provide unlimited perpetual care, feeding, counseling, and stuffed animal toys for anyone who would otherwise get on the subway and cause disruption and mayhem. Subway riders deserve a safe, unmolested ride in exchange for the price of the ticket. The other folks deserve all that other stuff in exchange for not causing disruption and mayhem.
I've heard it said that the ultimate purpose of the police is to protect criminals from the public. The same would be true of the violently mentally ill. People who want to defund the police are indifferent to the safety of the middle and working classes, but at some point, those people will defend themselves.
deblasio wife pilfered the mental health budget, the depolicing movement made the city less safe,
They have a similar problem with the Los Angeles Metro Rail system. There have been a lot of people getting stabbed and last week a homeless person actually bit a part of a police sergeant's little finger off when they were trying to remove him from the subway.
Nothing will be done about mental illness in the foreseeable future. Trump supporters are more likely to be committed than the mentally ill.
The thing is, if you are robbing people at knife point and and one of your victims shoots you, then most people think you did have it coming. Only slaves don't have the right to defend themselves.
The young men he shot were simply criminals, robbers, on the subway to find victims. Neely was, it seems, mentally ill and on the subway for shelter.
It seems he was mentally ill. It doesn't seem that he wasn't there to find victims. Mentally ill people can be violent and search out victims. Neely threatened people in the car. That's when he was subdued.
Threatening violence is a criminal act. He had committed violent acts previously, including kidnapping charges for which he spent 4 months in jail. If he had just slumped in the corner of the subway car nobody would have cared.
Neely's case demonstrates the need to do something effective to help mentally ill people or at least protect the public from them.
Effective is the key word. Unfortunately, for violent mentally ill it would require forced hospitalization. Not simply shelter.
Neely had already been convicted of a crime, was sentenced to 15 months of alternative-to-prison treatment for his mental issues. He failed to show up for that treatment, had assaulted another person, had an outstanding warrant and was known by multiple passengers on that train line and station as someone that physically assaulted women and the elderly. There is also an issue where, if we believe the claims of what the ex-marine had done, it took police more that 15 minutes to respond to a known, violent criminal intimidating passengers on the train.
The basic failing here is that people forget that laws, police and prison don't just protect the public from criminals, it also protects criminals from the public.
why not just reserve a rail-car for them to keep on riding??
much cheaper than housing them in commandeered luxury housign.
Those Charles Bronson 'Death Wish' movies came BEFORE the Bernhard Goetz incident.
The stuff they leave out says everything. Goetz “thought” he was being robbed because they had threatened him with a sharpened screwdriver. Seems relevant, but the leaving it ou created “a stronger story.”
“ Neely's case demonstrates the need to do something effective to help mentally ill people or at least protect the public from them.
The Goetz situation shows the problem of crime out of control. What do you want to do about street criminals?”
Neely’s case is indeed about the problem of crime out of control.
He was arrested 44 times. THAT is crime out of control in ADDITION TO mental health.
I am tired of talking about him.
I immediately move far away if I see someone who appears like s/he might be threatening—way down the platform or into another car. I used to not move because I worried about appearing racist if the potential threat was black. I’ve decided that continuing to be alive is more important.
Neely's case demonstrates the need to do something effective to help mentally ill people or at least protect the public from them.
We used to. We used to lock them up in buildings surrounded by chain link fences with trained doctors and nurses inside. Then we decided that the mentally ill have the right not to be locked up in buildings surrounded by chain link fences with trained doctors and nurses inside.
So you get what we have here today, which is the way the Left wants it. . . well, we get it. I don't like it any more than you do.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
"Neely's case demonstrates the need to do something effective to help mentally ill people or at least protect the public from them."
We used to have that. Back in the 70s the police, a doctor or a family member could have someone institutionalized against their will if they posed a threat to themselves or others. The ACLU decided that wasn't fair and presto! Chronic homelessness and the accompanying crime.
We have both a crime and a mental illness problem, both exasperated and promoted by the left. We lack the ability to police people of color, because of the prevalence of specious charges of racism. All this as the left desires. NYC is sliding into a cesspool of its own making. But that's ok, as long as they do mis-pronoun someone.
I am ambivalent on this one. If a man comes screaming through the car I'm sitting in, and openly says that he's perfectly fine with life in prison, am I to assume that his intentions are fully peaceful? I do not trust to my own instincts so far. I would huddle in a corner and hope no one noticed me. Which is not anyone's view of a nice commute. Imagine that experience multiplied by some millions, day after day.
The thing is, this isn't an uncommon thing in today's Manhattan, and it's only getting worse.
I don't feel that vulnerable to attack by psychos. I'm tall and weigh in at two hundred. These psychos seem to have a penchant for attacking people smaller than themselves. Their targets are frequently elderly Asian women.... What I do feel vulnerable about is not having the cojones to intervene if an attack took place. I saw that video of the psycho beating up a woman on a subway passage way. Somebody tried to intervene, but when the psycho ran towards him, the good citizen ran away. I wouldn't want to live with myself if I ran away in such a moment....If they prosecute that Marine they will make it a lot more likely that people will find an excuse to not intervene. And, of course, a lot fewer people will ride the subway which will make it more likely that such attacks will occur. On the subway, there's much to avoid and nothing to enjoy on the best of rides. Don't add existential crises and increased risks of mortality to such rides.
I am old enough to remember when the mentally ill were institutionalized and when the social scientists decided it would be much better for them to be in the general population. I believe that we have enough data on that experiment to decide that being in an institution is more often better for the ill person, as well as society in general, than the current state of affairs. Threatening behavior by thugs or nuts is still threatening behavior.
Marshall Davidson Sr. said:
Professor Umbach said: "We can’t have a subway system that’s both a system of transportation and housing for the homeless. Those are incompatible goals"
We have a subway system that provides 1) transportation, 2) housing for the homeless and for the mentally ill and, 3) easy marks for criminals precisely because those who control political contributions do not use the subway.
@Minnesota family guy
Bingo. Everyone knows the answer. Everyone has their hand up. Everyone knows the solution. Women and gays think it's inhumane.
Your Mileage May Vary.
CbI coming the videos on twitter where some mentally ill deranged person terrorizes the car. Then commenters all puff up and criticize men for not putting them down. Mentally ill are dangerous.
There are no accounts that the "muggers" (sic) in the Goetz case had robbed anyone on that train.
Yet.
And those passengers get to thank Goetz it stayed that way.
Ron Winkleheimer said:
The thing is, if you are robbing people at knife point and and one of your victims shoots you, then most people think you did have it coming. Only slaves don't have the right to defend themselves.
Carry out this thought: Who, precisely, is the master? Who is the slave?
Modern culture is gradually setting the conditions such that the normal, law-abiding productive citizen is beholden to whoever choses to victimize them. Implication? That the law-abiding are being enslaved by their civil masters in service of the vast underclass that won't work and doesn't contribute.
How do you foresee that working out? Do you think that this is a long-term tenable situation, that people will tolerate? Will there eventually be a counter-reaction from the productive types?
From observation, I'd say that there was a vast reservoir of forebearance and tolerance in the average American citizen. That particular account has been drawn down to the point where I'm expecting a bit of a tipping point to be reached in the near- or mid-term future. No idea where that's going to end, or how bad the reaction is going to be, but I don't think that the average person's toleration for this BS is as infinite as many of our social parasite-enablers assume it is. I think that you may well see the day when someone says "Y'know... Pastor Bill keeps that damn soup kitchen going, which draws in those zombified freaks that wreck the neighborhood... Mebbe we ought to burn the church down with their encampment, while he's in it with them..."
Modern progressives behave and conduct themselves as though there are no limits on their actions or the effects those actions have on others. They are going to find out, the hard way, that there are hard stops. Very hard stops, ones that will likely see these idjits heaped in piles and burned along with the criminals and insane they've taken up advocacy for, just like what is going on in Haiti.
In the end, the quality of life which has been destroyed in cities like Seattle will be blamed on the various activists and do-gooders as much as on the actual homeless drug addicts and criminals they enable. That's going to be what ends the "progressive experiment" as much as anything. Once they've finally discredited themselves and their ideas sufficiently with the general mass of the body politic, then you're going to see some rather unpleasant repercussions working themselves out.
(cont)
I think we shouldn't be too damn surprised when the lynch mobs ignore the actual criminals as peripheral issues, and go after the prosecutors and judges in their place. Day is coming when being a lawyer and a member of the persecuting elite is going to be anathema to the general public, and you'll see some very horrid things happening.
Which I'm not advocating for, either. I'm just looking on in horror, and working out the likely implications if the trends continue, and nobody does anything to end the egregious stupidity. I honestly don't understand why these people can't work out the likely effect from their causative actions... It's like they never picked up a history book, or met actual people, or something. I honestly think that the biggest problem we have is that our current system elevates people who are essentially autistic to a large degree, and who cannot comprehend the real-world effects of their own actions. They thought it was inhumane to keep the mentally ill and otherwise dysfunctionals institutionalized; did they not grasp what would happen to them, how they would wind up once they were released? What they would do, and how that would impact how the vast sane majority would process dealing with them?
Day's coming when people don't look on with pity, at these vagrant dysfunctionals, but with remorseless unfeeling rage at what they've done to the public commons. Tipping point gets reached, and you'll see people nodding approvingly as the roundups begin, and they'll be entirely uncaring about where they go after, and care even less about whether or not the "relocation centers" do anything at all for the dysfunctionals, aside from provide speedy means of self-ending themselves.
Friend of mine made the comment that living in Seattle has made her a fan of the idea of banning Narcan, making the administration of it a capital offense, and providing (as she put it...) hot and cold running Fentanyl in the streets.
Ten-twenty years ago? I can't imagine her (very liberal hippie/granola type) saying anything at all like that. She was carrying a gun the last few years she lived in Seattle, because of the homeless. She finally left when one killed her dog in front of her.
All I can say to the touchy-feely types that have enabled all this and brought us to this point...? Y'all have sown the wind; you will reap the whirlwind. Don't be surprised or horrified at the end-state we wind up in, because it's your damn responsibility, your damn fantasy-land view of how the world works that has done this. I hope you like it.
Michelle Dulak Thomson @ 2:34: "... If a man comes screaming through the car I'm sitting in, and openly says that he's perfectly fine with life in prison, am I to assume that his intentions are fully peaceful? I do not trust to my own instincts so far. I would huddle in a corner and hope no one noticed me. Which is not anyone's view of a nice commute. Imagine that experience multiplied by some millions, day after day...."
I might join you in that corner but I'd like to think I would go to a ready stance. Or arrange my key-ring as a "claw" hand. Or take off my belt and get ready to flail. Part of effective defense is demonstrating a readiness to make life painful for the attacker.
Even if we are alone, we can do things --cheap, simple, legal things-- to deter, deflect, defuse, defend.
And, as you say, we are not alone. There are millions of commuters riding the rails. And day by day they grow more fed up.
The young men he shot were simply criminals, robbers, on the subway to find victims. Neely was, it seems, mentally ill and on the subway for shelter.
Does it seem that way?
The idea can't really be that if someone is mentally ill then it's ok for them to attack you. The line between someone who's "simply a criminal" and using force to take something form you and someone who's mentally ill and using aggression, intimidation, and the threat of violence too take something from you sure seems awfully thin.
Possibly you aren't aware but this particular person had been arrested more than 40 times in the last few years, most often on or near the subway, and several of those were for violent attacks. Since he was actually arrested that many times it's fair to assume he actually committed many times that number of offenses.
Did you know he had an open felony warrant for punching an elderly woman in the face?
Did you know he served time in jail for dragging a 7 year old girl down some stairs at a subway station? He was originally charged for kidnapping in that one but accepted a sentence for lesser charges.
But yeah, he wasn't a criminal, just mentally ill and there to find shelter.
Maybe his aggressive yelling in people's faces and making them fear for their safety is just an advanced form of heckling! Too bad there wasn't a DEI dean there to straighten things out.
A confused man. A confused woman opens a mass abortion field. A confused boy opens fire on his classmates. A psychopathic teenager aborts his grandmother (mother?) and runs her guns to a school. A confused feminist patch denies insects throughout their metamorphosis. A confused "hero" summarily executes an unarmed woman in a prone position. And throughout there were people braying "burden", phobic, privilege, toxicity, diversity, replacement, and all manner off genocidal incitement. There are diverse precedents for self-defense, but the Marine acted with restraint to restrain a progressive risk to self and community.
I DO remember the aftermath of Bernie taking out the trash. The subway system in New York enjoyed their most incident free three weeks in the wake of his shootings.
Clint Eastwood attributed the success of Inspector Callahan/Dirty Harry to the public's exasperation with the failures of public safety. One can say it's a "mental health" issue as you drive by in your Audi. To the throngs terrorized by the kite cases in their subway systems it's "Welcome to the Jungle". A circumstance rarely, if ever, experienced by those raised in wealthy middle class suburban enclaves.
"Local news reports at the time quoted riders on the train who said the boys were walking through the car asking passengers for money"
LOL! A gang of young black teenagers go through a subway asking for money, and Robert wants us to believe that they are really asking. Tell us, Robert, how many of the passengers said, "No," before they reach Goetz?
@takirks
Nailed it. Academics like Althouse just don't understand their entire careers are based on blood and toil that isn't competitive in a classroom, it has to be proved by blood and toil on a field. They need a winner. None of it exists until there is a victory, and without victory, there is no peace, just a bunch of yentas screeching about whatcudda-ben. Lol, Althouse would still be arguing for constitutional monarchy if Bostonians hadn't dumped tea in the river lol, she'd give it a "cruel neutrality" tag, to be followed by a screed about how "we're better off together with the crown..."
I like althouse.blogspot.com. It's one of the few places people can still speak their minds. But it doesn't change the reality of the human condition. Forces are working everyday allday to restrain reality and some of us and our descendants will fight to the death to prevent it from happening. It isn't preventative either, some of us do have vision of what could be, not all of us, but some do.
Why are there no subways in the mass shooting cities? Crazies gotta kill somebody, or be killed. Neely cold cocked a seated old woman breaking her nose and fracturing her eye socket. Bleeding hearts get so many innocents killed.
The shit goin down in that subway car was not hypothetical.
Pro Life Tip: Avoid physical confrontation with a Marine.
I was once accosted by an intoxicated older fellow at a bus station, who waved a Buck knife at me as he yelled, "I'm gonna cut you, white boy!"
It was then I learned I could climb backwards over a newspaper vending machine without looking at anything but the oncoming knife. Fortunately, that metal box was enough barrier to prevent further approach by the old drunk, and his buddy pulled him away in another direction.
I'm too old for that sort of think now, and would be forced to try self defence. I don't want to ever have to do that, first because I don't want to, and second because it might not work for me. Hope a Marine is around if that ever happens to me again.
All I can say to the touchy-feely types that have enabled all this and brought us to this point...? Y'all have sown the wind; you will reap the whirlwind. Don't be surprised or horrified at the end-state we wind up in, because it's your damn responsibility, your damn fantasy-land view of how the world works that has done this. I hope you like it.
The political left (Garfinkle) has punished those who defended themselves. Eventually the normals will start to resist this suicidal policy. Some places, like NYC, LA, Chicago, will allow the insanity to peak. Normal places, like Arizona, are going to start taking care of business. We got a Soros clone for Governor so far but I'm not sure she will be able to do anything. Carjacking here is rare because everyone is armed. Texas, outside of Austin, is similar. The movie, "Death Wish" was popular for a reason. There was a reason audiences applauded the movie.
@Begley:
Ironically, Jerome Kersey was just starting his rookie season for the Portland Trailblazers when Bernhard Goetz shot those guys on the subway. Kersey's shooting percentage that season was 47.8 percent, while Goetz's of course was 100%.
Kersey was better at finishing, than Goetz was, since he tended to attack the basket instead of waiting for the action to come to him. Both were excellent shooters at close range.
@Begley:
Ironically, Jerome Kersey was just starting his rookie season for the Portland Trailblazers when Bernhard Goetz shot those guys on the subway. Kersey's shooting percentage that season was 47.8 percent, while Goetz's of course was 100%.
Kersey was better at finishing, than Goetz was, since he tended to attack the basket instead of waiting for the action to come to him. Both were excellent shooters at close range.
"LOL! A gang of young black teenagers go through a subway asking for money, and Robert wants us to believe that they are really asking. Tell us, Robert, how many of the passengers said, 'No,' before they reach Goetz?"
Well, having experienced people walking through the subway cars asking for money for 40 years, I can assure you the mere act of asking for money is not automatically a prelude (or tantamount) to a mugging. Am I claiming muggings do not take place in the subways? No, of course not. But the facts as described in the Goetz case didn't convince me even at the time that Goetz was justified in his acts of violence.
And, as to your question, there were never any reports that those young men took any money from anyone on that train. Whether the people on the train said "No" or just remained silent, I cannot answer. Most riders don't respond or even look up from their newspapers (or smart phones nowadays) in such situations.
"The stuff they leave out says everything. Goetz 'thought' he was being robbed because they had threatened him with a sharpened screwdriver. Seems relevant, but the leaving it out created 'a stronger story.'”
No, they didn't. They were carrying screwdrivers on their persons as tools they intended to use to steal cash boxes in the video games at PLAYLAND at Times Square. So, they were petty criminals, to be sure. But they were not brandishing their screwdrivers as weapons.
The relevant passage from the news article linked above:
"Neither side objected to giving the screwdrivers to the jury, which was in its third day of deliberation. After the shootings, there were news reports that the teen-agers had approached Goetz with sharpened screwdrivers.
"But those reports were later found to be untrue. The tools were not sharpened, and the jury heard testimony that the screwdrivers - two of them carried by Cabey, one by Ramseur - were never taken out of their pockets."
Oh, and:
"Goetz, in taped statements, never once mentioned the screwdrivers or any other weapon, and said in fact that he knew that Canty, who approached him and asked for $5, was not carrying a gun."
"The movie, 'Death Wish' was popular for a reason. There was a reason audiences applauded the movie."
Yes, because most people are fearful of crime they only see reported in the various news media, (print, broadcast, internet, social media, etc.). The public's fear is stoked by sensationalistic headlines and coverage as the means of attracting readers and viewers. Fear Feeds Profits. It's a money game.
"Well, having experienced people walking through the subway cars asking for money for 40 years, I can assure you the mere act of asking for money is not automatically a prelude"
I asked about a gang of young black teenagers, Robert- not just some random homeless guy. Also, I did not ask or say that it was automatically a prelude to a mugging- the mugging is the threat behind the question is this particular case, though, but it need not take place if the people just hand them some dough. So, how many of the passengers that day turned these teenagers down?
Let me also ask- if these teenagers had approached you and asked for money, what would you do?
Yancy Ward,
I would have ignored them or said “no,” as I have done many times.
But, why do insist on saying the request for $5.00 held behind it the threat of a mugging? There’s no reason to know or assume this. Why do you call them “a gang?” They were traveling together, as many do. Are all groups “gangs?” Again, they walked through the car asking for money. There is no reporting that other passengers gave them money or that they mugged anyone. I don’t know if other passengers said no or if they just ignored them, the customary reaction by commuters to people asking for money. They brandished no weapons. Apparently, three of them had seated themselves. The entire incident was set off by Goetz’s decision to withdraw his weapon and discharge it, an action he had been looking for an excuse to carry out. He had been seething with anger following a mugging he experienced a year or two before.
By discharging a gun in close quarters on a moving sabway car, he endangered everyone in that car. Goetz was the only menace on that car that day.
But the Goetz case was different. The young men he shot were simply criminals, robbers, on the subway to find victims. Neely was, it seems, mentally ill and on the subway for shelter.
No, he was on the subway to harass people, just like the criminals who threatened Goetz.
https://nypost.com/2023/05/06/jordan-neely-was-aggressive-in-subway-day-before-he-died-reddit-user/
The day before a homeless man went on a scary rant on the subway that ultimately resulted in his death, he nearly pushed someone to the tracks at the same station, according to a Reddit user who posted about the incident.
...
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.
...
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.
Hey Cookie, why dont' you go tell that 67-year old woman that it's all "fear" put into her mind by the "evil X"
lgv said...
I remember the Goetz incident. He was no hero. He was more of a Charles Bronson wannabe.
You are scum, and wrong
Lloyd W. Robertson said...
Still no arrest? I would think a case could be made for trying Daniel Penny for manslaughter, and letting a jury decide.
Sure, if your'e a monster, and a garbage human being
The decent human beings know that the ordinary people's right to go about their life is far more important than the criminals' "right" to harass them.
Daniel Penny should be given no trial, and the Thanks of the City
Robert Cook said...
Yep, I remember, too. He had a grudge over a previous mugging and he was looking for an excuse to act out.
This would be the same Robert Cook who wrote "Yes, because most people are fearful of crime they only see reported in the various news media"
The mind that can produce both sentences is really quite "special"
The statements are not contradictory, traitor.
Yes, Cookie, they are
The crime is real, it is widespread. Goetz, contrary to your bloviating, was reacting to what had happened to him.
The Marine reacted to what was happening TO HIM, at that time.
People who regularly ride the subway are upset because of what happens TO THEM.
You, OTOH, are a lying sack of shit who is very happy that bad things happen to them. And whose only hope and goal is to make sure that more bad things happen
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