As we previously reported, chaos erupted in New York City Saturday as “peaceful protesters” took to the subways to wreak havoc and try to provoke the police in the aftermath of the death of 30-year-old homeless man Jordan Neely.
Neely, as RedState readers will recall, was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital not long after he was subdued by multiple passengers, with one of them putting him in a chokehold according to NSFW video footage after Neely allegedly behaved in an aggressive and threatening manner, saying he was hungry and didn’t care if he got arrested.
According to reports, such behavior from Neely was not uncommon. Neely had a history of mental health issues and erratic behavior on city streets and subways, which included hostile confrontations with passersby/fellow subway riders. He also had dozens of arrests over the years, with four of them being over alleged assaults.
His death has provoked the typical “outrage” displays we often see from woke politicians who are quick to pretend to “care” when tragedy strikes but who otherwise look away while the very policies for which they advocate usually end up leading to the very types of volatile, no-win situations like the one we saw play out Monday with Neely and the subway passengers.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) the self-styled so-called “leader” of the infamous “Squad,” has led the way in saying the very types of incendiary things about Neely’s death (claiming that he was “murdered“) that stoke the fires, fan the flames, and fuel far-left radicals to all but literally declare war in the streets in a very dangerous Antifa/Black Lives Matter/Occupy Wall Street-type fashion.
She, like many other so-called “leaders,” has also been saying a lot about mental health in the days following Neely’s death, suggesting in so many words that he didn’t deserve to die simply because he allegedly was having a mental breakdown on the subway.
“Killing is wrong. Killing the poor is wrong. Killing the mentally ill is wrong. Why is that so hard to say?” she wrote in one tweet, while in another she tweeted a link that tried to make the case that locking up the mentally ill was not the solution to the crime problem.
But it was one AOC posted in the midnight hour on Saturday night that raised a lot of eyebrows.
“Republicans keep blaming mass shootings on mental health, but then defend the killing of the mentally ill too,” she opined, apparently unaware that one is not mutually exclusive of the other, as explained by conservative commentator Tarah Price:
This is how logic works:
If many active shooters suffer from depression, anti-social behavior, schizophrenia, gender dysphoria, or other mental illnesses, and police/ citizens must shoot or restrain them when they pose a threat to the public, then YES, logical people identify…
— Tarah Price (@tarahtalk) May 7, 2023
Another pointed out that the bluer-than-blue city of NYC – where pretty much anything goes but law and order – is who failed Jordan Neely, not anyone else:
New York failed Jason Neely and the public. 40+ arrests, and they didn’t try to help him one of those 40 times is just insane.
— Rogue The Legacy (@RogueTheLegacy) May 7, 2023
Something else I find disturbing about the arguments AOC and her ilk are making is the implied suggestion that Jordan Neely should have been left alone that day – period, even if he did have plans to victimize passengers. That’s just crazy, but it’s about what we’ve come to expect from the same people who on one hand demand we defund the police but who on the other have taxpayer-funded private security at all times.
I mean there seems to be no middle ground here. There is legitimate debate on the right about what level of force should have been used on Neely, but on the left, what they’re arguing is that basically no one on the subway that day had the right to self-defense.
In a December 2022 report from CNN of all places, the quiet part was said out loud about how people still weren’t riding the subway at pre-coronavirus pandemic levels “in part due to wariness over an increase in violence on the transit system.”
Subway riders in NYC know on any given day they are going to be subjected to some form of strange behavior/actions from others, some of which may turn hostile and provocative. They also have fresh in their minds how some have used the subways to try and exact revenge for perceived slights, as happened in April 2022 when Frank James threw a smoke bomb and then opened fire, injuring 29. Miraculously, no one was killed.
“Investigators were examining social media videos in which the 62-year-old decried the United States as a racist place awash in violence and sometimes railed against Mayor Eric Adams,” WABC-TV reported at the time.
Six months later, WABC filed another story on James’ refusal to appear in court. In that piece, they wrote about how it had been a “rough two weeks” for the subway system:
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell toured the subway station where a teen was assaulted over the weekend and rode with New Yorkers who all have an opinion.
It’s been a rough two weeks in the transit system, with three murders — two in the subway and one on a bus.
I can’t say if the force the passengers used on the subway on Neely that day, including the chokehold, was excessive because I wasn’t there and we only have a partial video to go on, and the word of the man who shot the video, as to what happened.
But what I do know is that New Yorkers are sick and tired of the routine problems they face on the transit system that are happening. And some passengers, like the ones who took action against Neely, are presumably of the mindset that they will not become victims regardless of whatever mental health challenges the person they’ve been forced to encounter may be facing, and regardless of whatever heat they may face afterward from shamelessly opportunistic politicians who get paid so well for their virtue signaling that they can afford the very type of luxury security and transportation that most subway riders will never get to see.
The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.
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