MOUSE BRAGG ROARS AGAIN

The other day I was downtown with a friend who lives on the West Side of Manhattan just across town from my East Side apartment. She said she was hopping on the subway to go home and I said, "Oh boy, not me. Not ever again. I don't trust it for a moment,” and hailed a cab.

I have, without hesitation, been a regular and confident passenger on the New York City subway system for the last 75 years. I have literally traveled on the subway lines from terminus to terminus. but I am now turning in my Senior Citizen Transit Card.

Last week a troubled young person named Jordan Neely was killed on the F train in a contretemps with a former Marine named Daniel Penny. These are the circumstances I have been able to scrape together from the media.

The decedent had an extraordinary arrest record – he has been taken away in handcuffs some 42 times. On four of those occasions he had been accused of assault. One of those assaults involved his walking up to a 65-year-old woman in a grocery store and, without provocation, punching her in the face. She suffered minor injuries, but then he did it again to a 67 year old woman in another store and this time the victim suffered major physical injuries.

Neely was known by the authorities to be a deranged person, and the result of this assault arrest was that he came before a judge who sent him to a home for deranged people and told him that he if he “behaved himself" for the next 15 months, the charges against him would be dropped. Neely spent four nights in the home and then walked out of the unlocked front door. Hooray for New York City's care of the mentally disabled. 

On being informed of Neely's walkabout, the judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest. Apparently, the authorities made no effort to look for him.

Neely did not escape to Mexico; he took a subway ride on the F train. While we do not yet have all the facts, this is what has been reported in the press so far.

In the subway car, Neely became extremely aggressive. He frightened the passengers by telling them "I don't mind going to jail and getting life in prison. I am ready to die."  

A law enforcement officer who has knowledge of the case told NBC news that an eyewitness reported Neely threatening,“I'll hurt anyone on this train.” 

Several people in the car were so frightened they called 911 and one of the callers said he thought Neely was armed.

In a social media report one scribe wrote Neely  had once tried to push him onto the tracks, at the same station.

So what we have here is an astounding failure of New York City's care of the mentally ill – literally a turnstile approach, in which the   judiciary is an active participant.

What happened next is tragic. With no social worker or law enforcement officer in the car, Neely was physically restrained by three male passengers: a former Marine named Daniel Penny and two other as-yet unidentified males.  Penny’s problem was that he restrained Neely by putting his arm around his neck instead of his head, while the other two men tried to restrain Neely's legs and arms. Penny was questioned by police at the scene and released.

But New York is New York. Neely was black and Penny was white. When the Coroner opined Neely was killed by the chokehold, there were demonstrations and accusations about racism and three days later District Attorney Mouse Bragg had Penny arrested and charged with manslaughter.

But now the matter goes to the Grand Jury and  the entire legal community knows that the DA almost always gets what he wants there. History supports the old saw, ”The Grand Jury will indict a ham sandwich if that's what the District Attorney tells it to do." 

But if Mouse Bragg plays this one straight and puts all the facts in front of the Grand Jury, this case could possibly be the exception. Indeed, a very cynical conspiracist could cobble together a scheme for just such a result, which gets Bragg off the hook. Could the Mouse do such a thing? If he feared losing Mark Pomerantz's serious case against Trump, what's the likelihood Bragg doesn't fear losing this one at trial?

I have reported here only those facts I could scrape from the media. Perhaps either side has facts that make indictment and conviction more or less likely. I have no idea. 

But I do know enough to come to three basic conclusions:

One. New York City's Health Department's system for managing the mentally ill and homeless is a disgrace.

Two. New York City's judicial system for  managing mentally ill dangerous felons is a disgrace.

Three. I am never riding the New York City subway system again.

A bientot.

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