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Why are so many people failing Jordan Neely? [1]
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Date: 2023-05-05
Then came the Jordan Neely story, and I was appalled, just appalled at the initial coverage, as well as by the remarks of leading officials of New York State and, by extension, New York City (where the attack happened).
I’d first come across the story in written form, in an article at the Washington Post.
Police say witnesses described Neely as acting in a “hostile and erratic manner.” The man was shouting on the F train that he was hungry and thirsty, Vazquez said, but did not attack anyone before he was placed in a chokehold. “I don’t have food, I don’t have a drink, I’m fed up,” the man screamed, according to Vazquez. “I don’t mind going to jail and getting life in prison. I’m ready to die.” Neely was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Neely used to perform on the subway as a Michael Jackson impersonator, local media reported.
The juxtaposition of Neely’s words and his ultimate fate may have evoked for readers the just world hypothesis, that Neely may have gotten, if not what he deserved, what he asked for.
Still, the end of the article did feature a promotional video of Neely performing as Michael Jackson, and it’s apparent that the man had moves. He was talented.
I then went to the Guardian, where the coverage of Neely was far more personable. In fact, the title of the article introduced the reader right away to the situation on the ground: “Outrage in New York after the killing of Jordan Neely on a subway train”.
The article describes more of what happened on that ill-fated trip:
According to police officials and video, Neely had been harassing passengers on the subway and making threats when he was placed in a minutes-long headlock by a 24-year-old former US marine. By the time the train pulled into Broadway-Lafayette, a stop that borders the SoHo and NoLIta neighborhoods, Neely was no longer conscious. He was later pronounced dead in hospital. The city’s medical examiner is investigating the cause of death. Juan Alberto Vazquez, the reporter who captured the incident, told the New York Post that Neely was screaming “in an aggressive manner” and complained of hunger and thirst but had not physically attacked anyone. Vazquez said the 24-year-old man approached Neely after he threw his jacket to the ground. When the video starts Neely was already on the subway car’s floor, with the man’s left arm around Neely’s neck. A second man holds his arms and a third held down his shoulder. After briefly trying to free himself he eventually goes limp.
I’m quoting at length, because this is really important. The eyewitness who captured the attack on video says unequivocally that Neely had not menaced anyone. Could his voice have been loud and disruptive? Sure. Could that be scary in a moving enclosure? Yes. I’ve taken the bus before and understand what it means to be in a captive enclosure with someone whose behavior you cannot control. But at this point Neely had merely unnerved his audience, crying out from what must have been a desperate situation.
I mark this because I then came across an NBC News report on the attack, dated May 4. The language used to describe the encounter was decidedly leading:
Another story that we’re following tonight is out of New York City. It involves a fatal chokehold on a subway car. A witness says a man was acting erratically and threatening other riders when someone who was also in that car stepped in and restrained the man, putting the alleged attacker in a chokehold to restrain him even more, and eventually the man died after being taken to the hospital.
This is the lead description. The victim is described as the attacker, the prime mover in this case. He had attacked no one.
So was this a case of someone protecting others, maybe even saving lives? — or an out-of-control vigilante who caused a homicide?
Just this set-up, this very question, leads the viewer to consider the first to be true, if for no other reason than Neely had just been described as the attacker!
If I had not already read about this incident in two articles, I may have been snookered into taking this implied, “reasonable” perspective. It’s a painted perspective. It’s the one NBC News is prodding its audience toward.
Vasquez [the eyewitness] says the rider’s worried, even scared him, wondering if the man could be armed. He believes that others around him were also in fear. New Yorkers are grappling with whether the man who put him in the chokehold is a hero or a vigilante.
One man interviewed in the subway for the broadcast said, “I found it to be disheartening.” When asked if he thought the 24-year-old restrainer would have been otherwise hailed as a hero had Neely survived, the interviewee said, “I do. I do. Because, you know, the trains are a scary time, and sometimes you need to step up.” He later added, “I think the cops are getting a bad rap.”
A former NYPD department head, Terrence Monahan, told NBC News, “You have a right to take action, as an individual on that train, to prevent someone from being assaulted.”
The 24-year-old who applied the chokehold was questioned and released, despite the coroner determining that the cause of death was neck compression from that chokehold.
It’s estimated Neely was kept in that hold for more than 15 minutes.
Now, does this fall into the same category as spraying someone with a water hose? That technically a crime may have been committed, but surely the young man was going to apologize and so what would be accomplished by prosecuting? What’s the controversy here? What’s the message?
The end of the segment saw the host and correspondent have a back and forth, where the actual assailant was described as “the so-called vigilante”. This again goes back to the leading characterization of who is to be valorized here and who is not to be mourned.
An NBC 4 New York segment was far more humanizing, depicting Neely in his Jackson get-up, smiling, putting the victim front and center in this story.
There’s a portion of the segment where Governor Kathy Hochul responds to a reporter’s question about the video. She says, “That was deeply disturbing. And that causes a lot of fear in people. And actually the mayor and I are working so hard to restore that sense of safety.”
I saw that clip and I was immediately struck by how equivocal that was. If you were on the side of the victim, you might read it as being somewhat sympathetic or at least neutral. On the other hand, those who supported the 24-year-old’s actions could clearly read the statement as supportive of the intervening action. Her words focus on fear, a sense of safety, and being disturbed. She’s not being a victim’s advocate here.
It was even more noteworthy when considered in the full background of her remarks. Sam Seder’s crew picked up the coverage.
The reporter had just asked her if she had seen the video, if she thought the person who choked Neely should be released without charges, considering the question of subway safety and that Neely did not seem to be acting violently.
Gov. Kathy Hochul: One element we have not talked about is a billion dollars’ investment we have in mental health services.
This is her starting statement, right out of the gate. Nothing in the question addressed or suggested mental health at all. That’s not the focus, but Hochul is making it the focus.
Hochul: ... a billion dollars’ investment we have in mental health services, so we don’t have people who are homeless on our subways, many of them in the throes of mental health episodes, and that’s why I believe that’s some of the factors involved here. “Now, people, there’s consequences for behavior. And I’ll look at it more closely to find out whether the state has a role. People who’ve been out on parole have different consequences, and a judge can make a decision on whether to hold someone or a DA can make a decision to charge them. But in a case where someone is on parole then the state has an ability, as we’ve done before in more serious cases, to ensure that someone is held during–pending the outcome of the episode. But, no, that was deeply disturbing….”
This is one of the slipperiest statements I’ve seen a government official make with regards to a homicide. Almost every sentence is in the passive voice, almost every verb a state-of-being verb. There’s no perpetrator here. But the #1 takeaway that I, at least, got out of this? “There’s consequences for behavior.” Coupled with the focus of much of the news coverage surrounding this story, the person whose behavior was erratic was Neely. So, did he get what was coming to him?
In the bright light of day, I’m more inclined to give the governor a bit more leeway in her remarks. But it was the wishy-washiness of her remarks in the first place that led to such ambivalence. I shouldn’t have been able to take it both ways. She was unclear, to the victim’s detriment.
(Eric Adams, mayor of New York, released a statement that, to his credit focused on the history of persons of color being racialized through a distorted lens in such cases where they’ve lost their lives. At the same time, as per the Majority Report, the services that the mayor offers to the least advantaged in his city go hand in hand with forced removal of homeless persons from public areas. They are shunted to emergency rooms, which is entirely coercive and designed, it seems, to keep undesirables out of sight. This is the wrong model and, indeed, would probably serve to increase the resentment unhoused persons might feel toward the state, to handle them so carelessly.)
Here is a 30-year-old man who was choked out, choked to death, in front of a crowd, some of which (it’s reported) were cheering. Those in the crowd may not have known it at the time, but they watched a man die in front of their eyes. They all murdered him. Some of this may be due to the bystander effect, where people will continue to not act if others around them also do not act, even when an emergency comes along. However, that does not excuse any cheering. That does not excuse the other two men who sat upon Neely’s soon-to-be corpse much as the cops did with George Floyd when they restrained him. It’s the same damned thing, except this time the people responsible were ordinary citizens. And the main perpetrator appears not even to be up for formal charges, from all appearances.
Just recently, I brought up Donald Trump’s call for forced tent-city housing for homeless persons, finding it to be clumsy and ill-considered. But perhaps the audience, the constituency with an attraction to this kind of idea, is growing. Perhaps their appetite is being whetted by the second.
In closing, I wanted to draw attention to a retrospective released this week by Weird History that featured Michael Jackson’s debut of the moonwalk during Motown’s 25th Anniversary special. This was a phenomenon I had the chance to view when it was originally broadcast. It was the talk of school the next day, and the playground, and the bus ride home. It was the most exciting thing that had happened in the lives of the members of my young generation. Long before his public shaming and downfall tainted his image, Michael Jackson in the mid-80s was a universally beloved figure, and watching the retrospective revived that sentiment.
The NBC 4 New York segment that had featured video clips of Jordan Neely performing as Michael Jackson would have evoked similar memories in those of us of a certain age, though Neely himself was too young to have witnessed the moonwalk’s debut first-hand. Yet even in that rather sympathetic segment, the video clips were immediately followed up with a triplicate of the word “homeless”, almost as to scrub that halo off of Neely, to remind the audience of his status as someone troubled and erratic, to bring him down to earth.
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