Some comments on Jordan Neely: What if?

 Daniel Penny has been charged with manslaughter for putting Jordan Neely in a choke hold on the New York subway after Neely threatened the passengers.  My advice in all criminal or even potentially criminal matters is that you wait for the investigation, and evaluate the facts in as dispassionate a mindset as possible.  With that in mind, what is my conclusion on the Neely/Penny case?  What did I just tell you?  Wait.  Let the investigation proceed.  You have no obligation to draw a conclusion before the full presentation of facts, and even then, unless you are a juror, you still have no obligation to draw a conclusion.  I shall wait.  Instead of telling you what you must think before the full investigation, we shall play a game called, "what if?"

What if Jordan Neely had no arrest record?  What if, instead, he had been on the train several times with a group of people, and one of them had been repeatedly harassing some women?  So what if Neely gets pissed off at the harasser, raises his voice-- from a seated position-- and tells the harasser to cut it out?  Keep in mind, in this totally hypothetical scenario, that Neely is both the hero, and completely physically nonthreatening.

But what if there is some guy named Daniel Penny, who has a history of cozying up to white supremacists.  Remember, this is not what happened, and I don't think there is any evidence that Penny has any white supremacist associations.  But this is a game called, "what if?"  So what if our bizarro-Penny watches this, sees alterna-Neely raise his voice to a white man, and decides, "I must do something and be a manly man of manly heroism!"

What if bizarro-Penny rushes alterna-Neely, "restrains" him-- and here I am specifically using a word that Case Western Reserve University will recognize-- with a choke hold.

And Neely dies.

That would be a clear murder, wouldn't it?  That act of "restraining" alterna-Neely would clearly be a willful act of violence, at best with reckless disregard.  Bizarro-Penny is the villain.

Why have I constructed this what-if?  Well, I'm glad you asked.

This scenario does have a few uncomfortable similarities to certain recent events that have befallen me.  I was not actually put in a lethal headlock for intervening to protect a woman.  I was just threatened.  It would be transparently false to say that it's all water off my back, if I keep writing publicly about it.  If I truly did not care, I would never mention it, so Peter Moore and others can preen and prance about having gotten to me.  Yay them, but at the end of the day, I can take care of myself by removing myself from dangerous situations.  Is it fair that I have to be the one to do so?  No, but life isn't fair.  Do what you have to do.  I am actually quite fortunate that I have the type of job for which I can simply remove myself from those situations.  Fuck "fair."  If you find yourself whining that "this isn't fair," remind yourself, "fuck fair."  Life isn't fair.  Life is a challenge, and it wouldn't be a challenge if it were fair.

However, the bigger question, and the harder question is the place of vigilantism in a dangerous world.

Make no mistake.  Whatever happened on that train-- and we do not know-- Jordan Neely was at least a potential danger in at least some situations.  His arrest record attests to that, as do his threats.  There were no police officers present, but merely a former Marine.  That would be Daniel Penny.

What would a police officer have done?  One of the most interesting interviews Coleman Hughes has ever done was with Anthony Barksdale, a former police chief and jiu-jitsu black belt who taught his officers jiu-jitsu for two reasons.  The direct reason is that it is a form intended to subdue using holds and locks.  The second is that those who train jiu-jitsu gain the kind of confidence such that they do not draw their weapons because they know they won't need them, as Barksdale knew.

I know nothing of fight techniques.  I watched the video, and I am sure that those who watch UFC can comment on Penny's jiu-jitsu technique, but one should recognize that what Penny was attempting was to subdue Neely.  Anthony Barksdale, or a UFC jiu-jitsu black belt would likely have been able to use a technique without lethal consequences.

And we turn to the reference points of George Floyd.  And Tony Timpa, about whom almost no one knows, unless they have taken classes from me.  The obvious problem with the police in those cases was the continued violence after they were no longer a threat.

A well trained police officer, had Neely been threatening the other passengers, would have placed Neely in cuffs, at which point Neely would not have been able to endanger anyone.  Anthony Barksdale could have handled it, without any lethal force.

But Daniel Penny wasn't Anthony Barksdale, and he was not trained for that.  He was just some guy.  Or rather, more than some guy.  He was a Marine.  General rule, don't fuck with a Marine.  Also, general rule.  Assume good intentions from a Marine.  They put themselves in the line of fire for you, and his goal was to subdue, not kill.

But he was also engaged in an act of vigilantism.

Remember my entreaty to withhold judgment and wait for the investigation.

The problems of the vigilante are many and varied.  They are untrained, and for all his training, Penny was not trained for this.  They have no process.  And our only process for evaluating them must be the criminal justice process.

Yet if you are being threatened, menaced, attacked, and there are no cops, but there is an ex-Marine, do you want that ex-Marine to sit back and do nothing?

Neely had not attacked anyone.  The legal challenge for assessing Penny is that it looks very much like Neely threatened to do so.  Where does that leave Penny?

Ask the counterfactual.  What if Penny had waited?  Is it plausible that Neely might have hurt someone?  Killed someone?  Had that been you, what would you have wanted Penny to do?

So many what-ifs.

Vigilantism is a nice fantasy for many, but it can go wrong so easily.  Anthony Barksdale wouldn't have killed Jordan Neely.  But Anthony Barksdale wasn't there.

What do you do when a cop isn't there?

Well, you had better make sure you have the facts right, in any case.  Your actions should always be calibrated to your knowledge and confidence in the facts.

Right now, you don't know.  Don't pretend that you do.

And it is OK to acknowledge that you don't have enough information to form a judgment.  A jury must.  You don't.

It's Friday.  Jazz.  Thelonious Monk, "Who Knows," from The Genius of Modern Music, Vol.1