The first thing I want to say about Jordan Neely is that his killing was a terrible crime and I hope his assailant is arrested and indicted. I don’t know what the right charges are, I don’t know what the right punishment is, but you can’t just choke someone to death like that. I don’t know why anyone would assume I would feel differently, but this is how I feel. I should have a piece out soon about Neely and involuntary treatment, discussed in theoretical and in practical terms. Today I want to talk about something broader. Broader and sadder.
I've seen only a smattering of conversation about the subway incident, as I've lately been working hard to cut down on my social media consumption for my own mental health. But still, it's painful to watch everyone on both sides speak in cliches all the way down.
Depending on who you follow, Neely is either a career criminal and nothing else matters, or he's an innocent MJ impersonator and nothing else matters. I'm glad I follow you because I'm not going to get real nuance in most other places.
The Neely story became more interesting when the Times reported that he actually did receive quite a lot of mental health care, all paid for by the city of New York, and had been committed to inpatient treatment (voluntarily and involuntarily) a number of times. Apparently, the city of New York keeps a Top 50 list of the most serious cases of mentally ill homeless people it keeps running into, and Neely was on that list. So even the question of "the system failed Jordan Neely" is muddied.
I also wholly agree with the observation that the tendency to waive off complaints about erratic and violent homeless people in publicly shared urban spaces is socially as well as politically self-destructive, and the Twitter zoomer white guy response of "whydoncha move back to Iowa if you're so scared, you pussies" is stupid and annoying beyond measure.
I remember even in New York City's Bad Old Days, for all the muggings and street crimes, the subways were not doubling as a rolling tent city for the homeless. I've never seen anything like the current state of both the trains themselves and some of the stations in New York, and pretending it's No Big Deal is so totally disingenuous, you wonder who actually takes the people claiming it's fine seriously.
Nobody can predict when an obviously paranoid schizophrenic will transition from just shouting and threatening to actual harm. Every New Yorker (and regular user of other urban transit systems) has seen these kinds of behaviors. Neely required three individuals to restrain him and still fought back. Is it now a requirement that some innocent passenger be injured first before action is taken to mitigate?
Not known by the subway passengers at the time was that he'd had countless encounters with the law already. What was known is the the other passengers on the train were entitled to a reasonably peaceful train ride to their destination. My bet is that Bragg knows any jury of New Yorkers will decline to convict, influenced by their own experience in the subway,
This is the reason I read Freddie. He accepts nothing is as simple as it seems, and he challenges us with his perspective. I won't say I always agree with him, but I sure do learn from him.
If it is “not defensible” for women to call the police when men harass and threaten them, then what are women to do? Would you support mace? Concealed carry? Or is this just a form of, “shut up bitch it’s not that bad”?
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I'm editing this response because it may be less charitable than Freddie deserves; some scenarios captured by what he conjures wouldn't be threatening. But others would. Moreover, the meme that it is "not defensible" to call the police when you fear violence is itself indefensible, and demeans an otherwise-strong post. Anyone who takes critiques of "systemic" bias seriously should also consider whether this dumb, execrable meme systemically disfavors a protected class who are on average less capable of self defense than men, plus far more likely to be targets than perpetrators of random violence.
Years and years and years ago, I almost did a very terrible thing. I was temporarily confused about what I was looking at and almost shot some children. Luckily, I figured out the deal before pulling the trigger, but it had me shook to see that there was apparently nothing inside me that would have stopped me.
It also shook me to realize that had I done it, I would have been practically immune to legal consequences. The law would have been on my side; turns out you can do all sorts of horrible things in a war zone as long as you can honestly say “Yeah that was an oopsie moment” afterwards.
I came to the conclusion that I was fundamentally a bad person. But also, I sort of became neurotic about analyzing morality and legality in murky contexts. Sort of a never-ending judgment on the self that was being projected onto others.
My judgment on the killing, as per my limited knowledge of the event, is as follows:
I don’t know if NY’s citizen’s arrest laws are the same, but in California you are still proactively held to be criminally and civilly liable for use of excessive force when subduing a criminal mid crime.
Like, cops are given an auto pass until there’s compelling reason to think they went overboard (like it or not, think it’s fair or not, think it’s good policy or not), but normal citizens are not granted that same preemptive approval and if they fuck a dude up more than they needed to it could get bad for them.
I do not know for certain whether circumstances required the choker to maintain the hold for 15 minutes. It’s not impossible that the victim was struggling so hard that he didn’t feel safe to let go; another interesting aspect of citizen’s arrest laws are that once you grab a dude you are legally required to hold him til the cops come, because if you tackle somebody and then let them go because it’s too much trouble then it’s just assault and battery. I don’t know if there were periods of squeezing and letting go and squeezing and letting go during the choke, because 15 minutes is a LONG ass time to go full pressure.
There’s a lot I don’t know and I’m not absolving nobody of nothing. Chewing through the details to see if the laws were actually broken is what the court is for, so the less wild rhetoric and obnoxious assumptions we fling around social media the fairer the judgment will end up being.
But I will say this- I’m one of the normies who you invoke. My crazy homeless people are in LA but it’s all the same game.
Every time I leave the house I got a work knife on me, because I suck at jiu jitsu and I’m old enough that my joints hurt and I got no wind anymore. There but for the grace of God go I.
Either solve the problem of people acting wild and violent in public spaces or you can expect these wild and violent events on a steady drip.
Your article is brilliant, subtle, and compassionate. You are right; mental illness is bad. I am currently the CASA (court-appointed special advocate for a child) for a young boy who has a serious neurological condition. Some parts of his behavior may improve, but he will always have mental illness. It’s hard for his parents, teachers, and people like me to love and care for a child who is unpredictably violent, screams a good deal, and is miserable much of the time. If our society cannot face its fears of the mentally ill and provide concerned help, children (and adults) like the boy I support will always be in danger. And our community becomes more hardened and cruel. Thank you for writing such a powerful piece.
I remember in the not so distant past that progressives believes in broad policy to improve people's lives, now it seems like the movement has shifted to telling people to accept that some people just are homeless, just are drug addicts, just are mentally ill and we need to just accept that. Instead of getting people out of tents and into housing, we should just accept tent cities. Instead of getting people who are addicted to a drug as horrible as fentanyl, we should just make sure people have narcan around them. Instead of giving the mentally ill all the care they need to live happy lives, we should just tolerate their behavior and suck it up. I am just so fucking done with it and I am sick that I was ever a part of it.
Oh and I was assaulted by a homeless man once, who took it upon himself to follow me for three blocks then stick his finger down the back of my pants and into my ass crack. I was basically terrified of any many walking behind me for months. Allow people to feel instinctually threatened but also don't allow them to be threatened.
What concerns me is so much of the talk on the left is about funding. We need more funding to help people like Mr. Neely. Well, Mr. Neely had a bed in a treatment facility that was offered to him as a way to avoid jail. Jail he was sentenced to for beating and severely injuring an elderly woman. And after two weeks he walked out.
The taxpayers of NYC paid for his treatment ,we did what everyone is saying should be done. But he was allowed to leave and now he is dead.
For those opposed to mandatory treatment - what is your response?
Freddie, your fear that normies will become convinced that "our movement doesn’t care about them and can’t be trusted to establish basic order" is undoubtedly true.
The supposedly unfortunate by-products of progressive policies in cities (e.g., when "normies" and young families are terrorized by the homeless mentally ill) are features, not bugs, to many American progressives. I find myself bemused that you seem to be puzzled as "your movement" consistently sidelines, ridicules, ignores, and stereotypes you when you try to apply your basic decency and moral intuition in arguments with deranged misanthropes who are just working out their daddy issues on Twitter.
FWIW if you actually watch the video it's possible to make the argument that the intent was just to restrain Neely rather than harm him. There are multiple people involved in restraining him and after he stops struggling they let him go and roll him onto his side so that he doesn't aspirate his own vomit.
Excellent piece. It is essential that we shed the delusion of mental illness as "just different", "harmless", and stop romanticizing it.
Severe mental illness is, in my opinion, a curse; full stop.
Some people, either for their whole lives or a portion of their lives, simply cannot function independently for all kinds of reasons, and need help. Thinking otherwise is an extreme form of individualism that just is not realistic and doesn't appreciate human nature.
I don't know what will or should happen to Neely's killer, although I think I suspect I would be more lenient on him than Freddie...I'm not sure to be honest. The whole thing is terrible. But I can say that his actions were at least fairly understandable given the breakdown of basic law enforcement. If this kind of thing keeps happening, eventually ordinary people will, for better or (usually) worse, start taking matters into their own hands. People shouldn't need to fear for their safety on public transit.
Getting even a few hundred very ill people off the streets in a big city could really change the quality of living for a place.
All things considered I prefer haloperidol to headlocks and risperdone to restraints.
This is really good and nuanced. It's so tempting to be like, "Eyeroll. If you you're scared of the city move to the suburbs." Of course it's frightening sometimes. Logically you know it's probably fine, emotionally/physically you're going to go into fight / flight, while having to sit still, which is a really uncomfortable feeling. I think something useful might be some kind of public service campaign by mental health professionals that deal with homeless people about what to actually do in a situation like that.
Great article as always. My only confusion is that I cannot quite tell if you use language (“execution,” “murder”) that is both legally defined and emotionally charged, because you think that (a) these terms are justified in the particulars of the brown and Neely deaths, based on a specific weighing of the available evidence, or (b) because you think that such incidents -- any time anyone uses intentionally deadly force (brown) or sufficient physical force that it can unintentionally result in death (neely, at least based on current appearances) -- are always and everywhere morally equivalent to murder/execution.
It kind of seems like (b) to me, but I am not totally sure that’s the correct read.
Due to OConnor vs Donaldson (74) involuntary care for mental illness in this country has required a prediction of “dangerousness” that no mortal professional can offer in good faith. Until we’re willing to change commitment laws we’ll be stuck in the same place.
I've seen only a smattering of conversation about the subway incident, as I've lately been working hard to cut down on my social media consumption for my own mental health. But still, it's painful to watch everyone on both sides speak in cliches all the way down.
Depending on who you follow, Neely is either a career criminal and nothing else matters, or he's an innocent MJ impersonator and nothing else matters. I'm glad I follow you because I'm not going to get real nuance in most other places.
The Neely story became more interesting when the Times reported that he actually did receive quite a lot of mental health care, all paid for by the city of New York, and had been committed to inpatient treatment (voluntarily and involuntarily) a number of times. Apparently, the city of New York keeps a Top 50 list of the most serious cases of mentally ill homeless people it keeps running into, and Neely was on that list. So even the question of "the system failed Jordan Neely" is muddied.
I also wholly agree with the observation that the tendency to waive off complaints about erratic and violent homeless people in publicly shared urban spaces is socially as well as politically self-destructive, and the Twitter zoomer white guy response of "whydoncha move back to Iowa if you're so scared, you pussies" is stupid and annoying beyond measure.
I remember even in New York City's Bad Old Days, for all the muggings and street crimes, the subways were not doubling as a rolling tent city for the homeless. I've never seen anything like the current state of both the trains themselves and some of the stations in New York, and pretending it's No Big Deal is so totally disingenuous, you wonder who actually takes the people claiming it's fine seriously.
Nobody can predict when an obviously paranoid schizophrenic will transition from just shouting and threatening to actual harm. Every New Yorker (and regular user of other urban transit systems) has seen these kinds of behaviors. Neely required three individuals to restrain him and still fought back. Is it now a requirement that some innocent passenger be injured first before action is taken to mitigate?
Not known by the subway passengers at the time was that he'd had countless encounters with the law already. What was known is the the other passengers on the train were entitled to a reasonably peaceful train ride to their destination. My bet is that Bragg knows any jury of New Yorkers will decline to convict, influenced by their own experience in the subway,
There is no such thing as a "normie." The unironic use of this term is a sure sign that someone spends too much time on the internet.
Otherwise, 100% spot-on! Excellent and compassionate piece.
This is the reason I read Freddie. He accepts nothing is as simple as it seems, and he challenges us with his perspective. I won't say I always agree with him, but I sure do learn from him.
If it is “not defensible” for women to call the police when men harass and threaten them, then what are women to do? Would you support mace? Concealed carry? Or is this just a form of, “shut up bitch it’s not that bad”?
##
I'm editing this response because it may be less charitable than Freddie deserves; some scenarios captured by what he conjures wouldn't be threatening. But others would. Moreover, the meme that it is "not defensible" to call the police when you fear violence is itself indefensible, and demeans an otherwise-strong post. Anyone who takes critiques of "systemic" bias seriously should also consider whether this dumb, execrable meme systemically disfavors a protected class who are on average less capable of self defense than men, plus far more likely to be targets than perpetrators of random violence.
Years and years and years ago, I almost did a very terrible thing. I was temporarily confused about what I was looking at and almost shot some children. Luckily, I figured out the deal before pulling the trigger, but it had me shook to see that there was apparently nothing inside me that would have stopped me.
It also shook me to realize that had I done it, I would have been practically immune to legal consequences. The law would have been on my side; turns out you can do all sorts of horrible things in a war zone as long as you can honestly say “Yeah that was an oopsie moment” afterwards.
I came to the conclusion that I was fundamentally a bad person. But also, I sort of became neurotic about analyzing morality and legality in murky contexts. Sort of a never-ending judgment on the self that was being projected onto others.
My judgment on the killing, as per my limited knowledge of the event, is as follows:
I don’t know if NY’s citizen’s arrest laws are the same, but in California you are still proactively held to be criminally and civilly liable for use of excessive force when subduing a criminal mid crime.
Like, cops are given an auto pass until there’s compelling reason to think they went overboard (like it or not, think it’s fair or not, think it’s good policy or not), but normal citizens are not granted that same preemptive approval and if they fuck a dude up more than they needed to it could get bad for them.
I do not know for certain whether circumstances required the choker to maintain the hold for 15 minutes. It’s not impossible that the victim was struggling so hard that he didn’t feel safe to let go; another interesting aspect of citizen’s arrest laws are that once you grab a dude you are legally required to hold him til the cops come, because if you tackle somebody and then let them go because it’s too much trouble then it’s just assault and battery. I don’t know if there were periods of squeezing and letting go and squeezing and letting go during the choke, because 15 minutes is a LONG ass time to go full pressure.
There’s a lot I don’t know and I’m not absolving nobody of nothing. Chewing through the details to see if the laws were actually broken is what the court is for, so the less wild rhetoric and obnoxious assumptions we fling around social media the fairer the judgment will end up being.
But I will say this- I’m one of the normies who you invoke. My crazy homeless people are in LA but it’s all the same game.
Every time I leave the house I got a work knife on me, because I suck at jiu jitsu and I’m old enough that my joints hurt and I got no wind anymore. There but for the grace of God go I.
Either solve the problem of people acting wild and violent in public spaces or you can expect these wild and violent events on a steady drip.
Your article is brilliant, subtle, and compassionate. You are right; mental illness is bad. I am currently the CASA (court-appointed special advocate for a child) for a young boy who has a serious neurological condition. Some parts of his behavior may improve, but he will always have mental illness. It’s hard for his parents, teachers, and people like me to love and care for a child who is unpredictably violent, screams a good deal, and is miserable much of the time. If our society cannot face its fears of the mentally ill and provide concerned help, children (and adults) like the boy I support will always be in danger. And our community becomes more hardened and cruel. Thank you for writing such a powerful piece.
I remember in the not so distant past that progressives believes in broad policy to improve people's lives, now it seems like the movement has shifted to telling people to accept that some people just are homeless, just are drug addicts, just are mentally ill and we need to just accept that. Instead of getting people out of tents and into housing, we should just accept tent cities. Instead of getting people who are addicted to a drug as horrible as fentanyl, we should just make sure people have narcan around them. Instead of giving the mentally ill all the care they need to live happy lives, we should just tolerate their behavior and suck it up. I am just so fucking done with it and I am sick that I was ever a part of it.
Oh and I was assaulted by a homeless man once, who took it upon himself to follow me for three blocks then stick his finger down the back of my pants and into my ass crack. I was basically terrified of any many walking behind me for months. Allow people to feel instinctually threatened but also don't allow them to be threatened.
What concerns me is so much of the talk on the left is about funding. We need more funding to help people like Mr. Neely. Well, Mr. Neely had a bed in a treatment facility that was offered to him as a way to avoid jail. Jail he was sentenced to for beating and severely injuring an elderly woman. And after two weeks he walked out.
The taxpayers of NYC paid for his treatment ,we did what everyone is saying should be done. But he was allowed to leave and now he is dead.
For those opposed to mandatory treatment - what is your response?
Freddie, your fear that normies will become convinced that "our movement doesn’t care about them and can’t be trusted to establish basic order" is undoubtedly true.
The supposedly unfortunate by-products of progressive policies in cities (e.g., when "normies" and young families are terrorized by the homeless mentally ill) are features, not bugs, to many American progressives. I find myself bemused that you seem to be puzzled as "your movement" consistently sidelines, ridicules, ignores, and stereotypes you when you try to apply your basic decency and moral intuition in arguments with deranged misanthropes who are just working out their daddy issues on Twitter.
FWIW if you actually watch the video it's possible to make the argument that the intent was just to restrain Neely rather than harm him. There are multiple people involved in restraining him and after he stops struggling they let him go and roll him onto his side so that he doesn't aspirate his own vomit.
Excellent piece. It is essential that we shed the delusion of mental illness as "just different", "harmless", and stop romanticizing it.
Severe mental illness is, in my opinion, a curse; full stop.
Some people, either for their whole lives or a portion of their lives, simply cannot function independently for all kinds of reasons, and need help. Thinking otherwise is an extreme form of individualism that just is not realistic and doesn't appreciate human nature.
I don't know what will or should happen to Neely's killer, although I think I suspect I would be more lenient on him than Freddie...I'm not sure to be honest. The whole thing is terrible. But I can say that his actions were at least fairly understandable given the breakdown of basic law enforcement. If this kind of thing keeps happening, eventually ordinary people will, for better or (usually) worse, start taking matters into their own hands. People shouldn't need to fear for their safety on public transit.
Getting even a few hundred very ill people off the streets in a big city could really change the quality of living for a place.
All things considered I prefer haloperidol to headlocks and risperdone to restraints.
This is really good and nuanced. It's so tempting to be like, "Eyeroll. If you you're scared of the city move to the suburbs." Of course it's frightening sometimes. Logically you know it's probably fine, emotionally/physically you're going to go into fight / flight, while having to sit still, which is a really uncomfortable feeling. I think something useful might be some kind of public service campaign by mental health professionals that deal with homeless people about what to actually do in a situation like that.
Great article as always. My only confusion is that I cannot quite tell if you use language (“execution,” “murder”) that is both legally defined and emotionally charged, because you think that (a) these terms are justified in the particulars of the brown and Neely deaths, based on a specific weighing of the available evidence, or (b) because you think that such incidents -- any time anyone uses intentionally deadly force (brown) or sufficient physical force that it can unintentionally result in death (neely, at least based on current appearances) -- are always and everywhere morally equivalent to murder/execution.
It kind of seems like (b) to me, but I am not totally sure that’s the correct read.
Due to OConnor vs Donaldson (74) involuntary care for mental illness in this country has required a prediction of “dangerousness” that no mortal professional can offer in good faith. Until we’re willing to change commitment laws we’ll be stuck in the same place.