Timex
4753
Seems like the DA is still investigating this, so I think there’s a chance the guy who killed the homeless guy may be brought back in on charges, but it does seem like there is a lot of uncertainty about what happened still.
My understanding is that there is no completely safe way to cut off the blood supply to the brain, which means that even if you are doing the chokehold entirely correctly there is still a chance to kill someone. E.g. you can do a chokehold 1000 times with no obvious long term effects, and then that exact same move will cause the next person to stroke out. The odds get worse when a chokehold is used on older people or people with health problems. Which is why police forces are (theoretically) not supposed to use it any more.
The person doing the chokehold in this case was an ex-marine, and I’m assuming he was doing what he was taught to do in marine school. The “best” case scenario is that the marine thought he was safely restraining the guy, and instead he hit one of those 1/1000 cases and caused a stroke. I think we need to know more before saying that this is a flat out murder.
I’m not sure why there’s any need to be so technical about what technique he used. He put the guy in a headlock, with his arm around the guy’s neck, and choked him to death. That’s what the medical examiner says: the victim died by being choked to death, and it’s a homicide.
Would a reasonable person know that if you put a guy in a headlock, with your arm around his neck, you might choke him to death? Yes, I think any reasonable person would understand that. If the victim choked to death, is it reasonable to believe that he struggled all the way up to the instant of death? Or is it more likely that, at some point, he lost the ability to struggle, and that his attacker kept him in that chokehold after it was no longer necessary? If in fact it ever was necessary, which seems doubtful.
Absolutely. “Safe chokeholds” are the provenance of TV shows and movies along with “safe knockout gas” and “knocking people out” with a swift thunk to the back of the head with a club. In real life, you’re very likely to kill people that way.
Gift link…
The article is all Scott (lynching even!) but the reader comments are all Timex.
(Okay, not all. But the top up-voted ones are.)
My favorite: “I am in New York frequently and have encountered people like this on the subway. I usually move to a different car instead of killing them but I guess that’s just me.”
Here’s the victim Jordan Neely doing his Michael Jackson routine.
Yeah, change cars or stare forward and ignore them. I was taught this when I was first riding the subway at like 6 years old. There are socially understood ways to handle this situation that millions of riders practice every year.
Here’s another article that’s better than the original coverage from the Times or Post:
Timex
4759
The thing is, the guy who died had previously been convicted of assaulting women, on the subway, 3 times.
While that certainly isn’t something which would have played into the minds of anyone on board that train, I think that it means we need to see what he was doing before this all went down.
The fact that he has an established behavior pattern of not just bullying, but actually physically assaulting people, in exactly that context, means that I don’t think we can assume he was just harmlessly yelling into the ether.
The guy who choked this guy out may not be a hero as some New Yorkers will no doubt view him, but the guy who died definitely wasn’t a hero either. He was a bully. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Part of me recognizes that he was a human, and any human deserves some degree of empathy, but part of me really, really hates bullies.
Who is saying this? And why does that make a difference?
Timex
4761
As I said, it only has relevance to this discussion because it means we can’t just ASSUME he wasn’t really threatening anyone, as some have suggested.
I think we need to wait to see what actually happened prior to him being restrained.
I’m sure he behaved in a way that made someone feel threatened.
But I don’t think just threatening justifies the use of deadly force.
KevinC
4763
Was he really a bully, or a mentally ill individual?
EDIT: I often feel like I need to clarify my tone in threads like this, but to be clear that’s an actual question, not a rhetorical one or a gotcha.
I don’t think the term bully applies here at all. Seems he was at his wit’s end and acting out either erratically or with the rational hope to find food and housing in prison.
I think the debate largely comes down to “what problem are we trying to solve?” People who are generally more sympathetic to the subduer are fed up with the government’s failures and Neely represents a larger, abstract problem. People who are more sympathetic to Neely are empathetically seeing this man as a victim of those failures. I’d say everyone’s right. (But fuck anyone calling the choke-holder a hero.)
I think it’s simpler that that for me. The guy who choked Neely to death committed a crime. You don’t have to be sympathetic to Neely’s plight to believe that assaulting panhandlers who annoy or verbally harangue you is a very bad turn of events, never mind actually killing them.
These are exactly my feelings. Thank you.
Fair. But I guess now they have to get deep in the weeds on who felt threatened and why and was it reasonable fear for their safety etc, etc.
Timex
4768
It’s a fair question, but I think the answer is… he was definitely a bully, and he may also have been mentally ill.
The presence of mental illness can make me feel empathy for him, and lament the fact that our society overall deals so poorly with the mentally ill.
But as I said before, the blame for that lies on the entirety of society, not the guy who decided to stand up to a bully. Standing up to a bully doesn’t make you a bully. The guy who died wasn’t some weak innocent. He was a guy who preyed upon the weak and the innocent. And that time, it didn’t work out for him.
Again, any loss of life is tragic, but you guys know I’d be saying exactly the same thing about some proudboy douchebag who got his ass beat after harassing or threatening people. That kind of activity really rubs me the wrong way, because it ruins society for everyone. It makes people feel unsafe doing normal shit, and it’s entirely unacceptable to me.
I do not think we can make that assessment until we see what happened prior to him restraining Neely. That’s why I’m reserving my judgement until that happens.
Menzo
4769
Yeah, we are in a post-Stand Your Ground world, so it’s apparently totally fine to kill people* if you feel threatened now. Or if you can convince the cops that you felt threatened.
*mostly swarthy types, of course.
I’m sure some people felt threatened by Neely, but I don’t think the fear they felt justified a violent response. But if we are at that stage, then that’s a question for a jury, not for a prosecutor. There’s a dead man there, and there’s a person who killed him. It looks like a crime.
Timex
4771
No man, assaulting women on the subway is the act of a bully. He didn’t get arrested those three times for assaulting random people. He got arrested for specifically assaulting people who were physically weaker than he was. Repeatedly.
And again, that doesn’t justify what happened. It just means that I’m going to wait to see what happened, before assuming that he didn’t do something that justified it.
I think this is absolutely right.
Personally, I’m wondering what the situation would be if the black homeless man Neely had choked the white ex-marine to death, and then said he felt threatened by him. Do we think he would walk?
