“It’s Showtime!!!”

The case of the death of Jordan Neely in a chokehold while on an F Train in the New York City subway has become a cause celebre as has the case of Christopher Penny, the man now charged with manslaughter in his death.

It is already reverberating in politics with potential to make serious damned if you do/damned if you don’t problems for Democrats wheras it is an easy call for Republicans aboard the train of just and justifiable deserts.

A story in the New York Times today (MAY 13, 2023) describes Neely’s presence on a list of the most severe cases of anti-social and/or mentally ill homeless people in New York City that is maintined and reviewed by city authorities weekly – weekly as in every week.

Actually, as the story explains, there are two lists, one of homless people like Neely living mostly in and on the subways and the other of homeless people living on the streets. Together in that city of 8 million people they contain fewer than 125 names betwen them.

If you did not know Jordan Neely, if Christopher Penny did not know him, if New York Mayor Eric Adams did not know him, the city knew him all too well.

Yes, the City of New York knew who Neely was. It knew of his more than 40 arrests, violent behaviour, the assault he made on a woman more than twice his age in a subway car when without provocation he smashed his fist into her face hard enough to break her nose and occipital bones. It knew notwithstanding as in that case for one, that again and again he had been released by its courts onto its streets and subways.

It knew of his many flights from hospitals and treatment facilities and who his family is, where they live in the city and that they had abandoned him as a problem for society in the form of the City of New York.

The Times artricle repeats the reports it and other news sources have provided of his purported talent as an immitator of the late pop star Michael Jackson, reporting that he “performed” Jackson’s “Moonwalk” dance for subway passengers.

But that is likely not quite so, not the way that happened. Much more likely if you have been on a subway is that he did not dance his dance for subway passengers but despite them. Much more likely is that he imposed his performances on them, a captive audience with nowhere to go on a train hurtling between subway stops or, worse, delayed between them (it happens).

Whether he announced- as so many unwanted subway “performers” have done now for decades before engaging in acrobatics on subway cars – whether he announced “It’s Showtime!!!” is irrelevant. It is entirely likely no one asked him to perform his dance, or hardly wanted it. He just did it and no doubt then begged for tips or, perhaps, pressed for them.

Note that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority which operates the subways has rules governing public busker performances. With prior approval the MTA permits them in stations at specific locations for specific periods of time. It does not allow them on its trains.

Did the system and its efforts to help Neely, as amply recorded in the accompanying Times story, fail him? Perhaps it can first be said his family failed him, failed him utterly, and is it just as true as not to say he in turn failed the system that gave him so many, many chances for rescue and recovery?

If a man wanders the countryside declaring himself the son of god could that be true? Anything can be – especially if it can’t be proved or disproved. Or, these days, could it be simply that he is off his meds? Today, that definitely can be proved and discernably so.

Whatever the facts of Neely’s demise and whether a jury of Manhattan residents (it will be hard if not impossible to find 12 who are not or have not been subway riders) finds a crime in those facts, there was ittle redemptive or redeemable in the husk of a man in the state into which he had fallen.

He should have been in an institution unless and until he could be restored to and maintained with sufficient mental balance. But more than four decades ago we as a society concluded, through our politicians and the laws they enacted, to shutter most long term facilities, the ones we colloquially called insane asylums, and reintroduce medicated mentally ill people into our communities on the theory they would be better cared for and do better themselves in society than in such places. Like others, both the States of New York and New Jersey did that.

If this event in the lives of Neely and Penny is the result, if the disturbingly sad story about a homeless man in San Diego, also told today in The Times, is the result then it was what? Then it was to be expected and so expectations have been met.

The next time someone on a subway in NYC announces, “It’s Showtime!!!” tell him no, no wants the show, they just want to get to their stops.

But, of course, doing that, doing that could get you killed, and that – THAT is what is really crazy.