Jordan Neely died this week. He was killed in a New York City subway car on May 1. The medical examiner ruled it a homicide. Neely, an unhoused New Yorker known for impersonating Michael Jackson, was put in a chokehold for 15 minutes by a 24-year-old former Marine who held him there until he was dead. The former Marine has not been identified despite video and photos of his face. He was questioned by police but let go.
Neely got into the car screaming, saying he needed food and water. He was tired. He threw his jacket on the ground apparently. Yes, he was behaving erratically. He clearly was in need of help, possibly experiencing a mental health episode. But he was not assaulting anyone, according to witnesses there, including one who spoke to the New York Times. Instead Neely himself was assaulted. Neely died. No one intervened to try and stop the attacker. In fact people helped hold down Neely’s arms while life was choked out of him. Jordan Neely did not need to die. He did not deserve to die.
"The man got on the subway car and began to say a somewhat aggressive speech, saying he was hungry, he was thirsty, that he didn't care about anything, he didn't care about going to jail, he didn't care that he gets a big life sentence," independent journalist and witness to the death Juan Alberto Vasquez told local news outlet NBC 4.
And yet on Twitter, in response to the news, people are saying so. Because he made people uncomfortable. Because he was behaving erratically. Because he apparently had an arrest record, something the attacker and people on the train surely knew about, obviously. Because he was poor and unhoused and undesirable. That justified vigilantism. People are coming out of the woodwork to defend Neely’s death and the use of force. Not to suggest deescalation or anything short of killing the man, just outright defending killing him.
Even Mayor of New York City Eric Adams, a man who runs a city that once had freezer trucks outside morgues but wants to ban masks in stores out of his crime panic agenda, a man who is trying to gut social services to boost an already inflated police budget, couldn’t even even condemn the killing as vigilantism while on CNN.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul didn’t fare better, initially saying in part that “there’s consequences for behavior.” She released a later statement today, which is an improvement over her first, but let’s be clear, both she and Adams had to be aware of what happened when they made those comments. New information has not suddenly come to light.
https://twitter.com/KateCagle/status/1653973004899196930
Meanwhile major local and national outlets like the New York Post and New York Times didn’t help matters either, Or take this since-deleted tweet from the Associated Press (via screenshot for posterity) that says “some called it a homicide.” That includes the medical examiner who looked at Neely’s corpse, who ruled it a homicide. The AP story even mentions that. But on social media, shared to the masses, it’s a he-said she-said scenario. And the whole matter was framed as the attacker, who again unnecessarily killed Neely, acting in “defense against disorder.” That’s bad journalism.
Maybe Neely’s behavior is unsettling. Seeing someone suffer is discomforting to witness. If you’ve witnessed poverty or been near unhoused encampments, chances are you’ve seen people struggling with mental health issues, either preexisting or brought on by the trauma of living on the streets. If you’ve ridden public transit, maybe you’ve seen someone going through rough mental issues. That’s not an excuse or reason to attack them. Homelessness is traumatizing. But by all accounts in the New York Times, NBC 4 and elsewhere, Neely appeared to be struggling personally, but not attacking anyone.
This country hates the unhoused. The people who have the least, who are struggling to get by but fall through the cracks of an underfunded, overworked social safety net. Being unhoused is criminalized in many cities, where having nowhere to sleep but the sidewalk can get you arrested. There is a massive housing shortage nationwide and until it’s built up — which to be clear is the solution and it’s not a quick and easy solution — those who do get in the system are stuck in limbo in temporary shelters, but not housing. All while laws criminalizing where they can go or what belongings they can have make their lives more difficult. If someone really is struggling, like Jordan Neely, are there well-funded social workers who can reach them? No. But police are called out of fear, or people take action themselves for no reason but to hurt unhoused people.
And guess what? This is going to be common. We’re seeing systems put into place that could make it open season on anyone who makes others uncomfortable. And if that makes you uncomfortable, that fact that our society is normalizing hurting and killing the less fortunate and making it legally safe, good. That should make you uncomfortable and angry.
Think back to last month, when Cash App founder Bob Lee was stabbed to death. Silicon Valley rich people immediately blamed unhoused people, accusing progressive policies in San Francisco of leading to filth and chaos and now deadly violence. And then it came out that Lee was stabbed by another tech worker who Lee knew. Or another Bay Area instance, when an unhoused person accused of beating up a former San Francisco fire commissioner accused him of being the one behind a series of bear spray attacks on unhoused people in the area. That is still to be determined, but consider that there were multiple attacks targeting encampments and other unhoused folks for months.
Neighborhood paranoid watch apps like Nextdoor and Citizen (formerly titled Vigilante) have stoked fear of any outsider. Citizen at the very least planned to test using armed private security, which could be dispatched by user request. Oh and don’t forget that time that the CEO of Citizen put up a bounty for info on a wanted arsonist — and identified the wrong man.
Or, take the incident in 2019 when two people threw fireworks into an encampment in Los Angeles County. It sparked a massive fire that prompted evacuations and was initially blamed on unhoused people. One of the accused is the son of the Eagle Rock Chamber of Commerce president. It wasn’t until 2021 that he was charged with the crime.
Fear and paranoia are the norm now, and they’re coupled with violence as a first choice. Even beyond attacks and dehumanizing of unhoused people, we’re seeing that every week. Look at all of the horrible shootings in the last two months. People have been shot for pulling into the wrong driveway. Ringing a doorbell. A family in Texas was killed execution style for asking a neighbor not to shoot his guns, due to the noise. Combine this trigger-happy atmosphere with the dehumanization of the poor, the unhoused, the people who are struggling and need help, and it’s going to get worse.
If you want to do something, help others. If someone is being attacked and strangled for 15 minutes, you step in.
Jordan Neely should be alive. He’s not. It’s very likely others will die from similar needless cruelty. We don’t have to let this become commonplace.