Murder in Manhattan

Voltaire once said, “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sounds of trumpets.” For a long time, the question of how ostensibly the most “civilized” societies can also often be the most bloodthirsty has plagued my mind. When Britain was the peak of sophisticated Western civilization at home, they behaved like Nazis abroad. Many patriotic Englanders still wistfully reminisce about the days Britannia ruled the waves. How can a society which prides itself as the pinnacle of magnanimity show such dispathy towards the suffering caused by said society? Whatever the answer, the same question comes to mind whenever another poor soul is killed by the “boys in blue.” You could be sleeping in your bed, have a SWAT team break down your door, get shot six times, and Fox News will claim you had it coming—especially if you're black. Police in the United States are the affluent country’s version of a poor country’s death squads; they serve the same institutional purpose: to keep the poor isolated, petrified, and above all, passive. The way many police departments function is not by accident, but by design. They are trained and encouraged to act like stormtroopers. After George Floyd was murdered, SWAT teams went around and shot rubber bullets, yelled, and laughed at people. Body-cam footage revealed one SWAT team driving around like a pack of hyenas in their van arbitrarily shooting pedestrians yelling “Gotcha!” and giggling with his mates as their rubber-bullet-bruised victim ran away. “Alright we’re rolling down Lake Street, the first fuckers we see we’re just hammering with forties [(forty caliber rubber bullets)],” one officer says to his enthusiastic team. This kind of attitude is not some kind of aberration—the people inclined to defend the cops are not the people most heavily policed, and more and more footage in this digital age is corroborating what these communities have been saying for years. For a long time, I believed law-enforcement defenders were motivated by a passion for authority, with underlying prejudices fueling their convictions. However, I now know it has nothing to do with a profound “respect” for the rule of law; dehumanization is the crux of this. We already live in a world where the winners of capitalism create reams of propaganda, trying to convince you the rules are fair, and that there exists no such thing as systemic problems. And if you believe we live in a fair meritocracy, where most people living in poverty are racial minorities, the logical conclusion is a racist one. And I can’t think of a better distillation of all the consequences that naturally follow from demonizing the destitute to kill any incipient threat of a more caring society, than the murder of Jordan Neely. Jordan Neely, a homeless man in New York City went viral last week for being killed by a former marine on a subway carriage. Neely had been braving the elements for some time, and remember that in New York that means jagged metal prevents you from sleeping on heating ducts—courtesy of our taxes, thank you America. Jordan was described as a “sweet kid” and talented dancer, he was a Micheal Jackson impersonator. Life became even more difficult after his mother was murdered by an abusive man, and her body was found in a suitcase. Years later, no one cared he was living in pessimum, he was reportedly “acting erratically” whilst yelling at passengers that he had no food. That’s when Daniel Penny walked towards him and strangled him with his bare hands until he was dead. The media response that followed was straight from the police-shootings play-book, highlighting the victim's arrest record (which Daniel Penny did not know), and using insipid, passive, and sometimes deceitful language; the New York Times headline was “man dies on subway after another rider places him in chokehold.” The New York Post’s was “shocking video shows NYC subway passenger putting unhinged man in deadly chokehold.” The Daily Mail outright lied to their readership by writing “video shows former US marine, 24, putting violent subway passenger in chokehold before the homeless man passed out and died in hospital,” not only do the eyewitnesses say Neely wasn’t “violent,” but he was also “pronounced” dead at the hospital, he might have died on the carriage (this is currently unclear). In any case, this is not the same era as that of the British empire, today there is outrage. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “Jordan Neely was murdered. But [because] Jordan was houseless and crying for food in a time when the city is raising rents and stripping services to militarize itself while many in power demonize the poor, the murderer gets protected [with] passive headlines [and] no charges. It’s disgusting.” This kind of insightful social commentary doesn’t sit too well with many people, however, like New York Mayor (and former cop) Eric Adams, who stressed that while “any loss of life is tragic . . . We do know that there were serious mental health issues at play.” New York Governor Kathy Hochul wanted to add that there are “consequences for behavior.” Those are fairly mild compared to a loud right-wing chorus defending a modern-day suburban lynching. Daniel Penny proves it’s not about the cops, it’s about whom they kill. Certain people, like the homeless, are undesirable and expendable. “Unpeople” as George Orwell called them. I don’t really have a profound point to end on, this is just something to remember and add to our society’s “to-fix” list. Other than that, there is no greater point to make about a pointless death.