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☆ Jordan Neely Will Be Mourned at Funeral in Harlem
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Maria Cramer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Jordan Neely spent the last few weeks of his life riding the subways of New York, hungry, desperate and alone. At his funeral on Friday, which will be held at 11 a.m. at Mount Neboh Baptist Church in Harlem, friends and family members will gather to mourn him. The May 1 killing of Mr. Neely, who the police said had been acting in a “hostile and erratic manner” on an F train before another subway rider placed him in a chokehold for several minutes, quickly divided political leaders and led to protests around the city. It has sparked debate around the country between those who believe the man who killed Mr. Neely, Daniel Penny, responded with violent vigilantism to a person who needed help, and those who believe he acted because he was trying to stop a threat. And it has raised questions about safety on the subway and the care provided to homeless and mentally ill people living in the city.

11 a.m. Stroll through a former zooThe Palermo neighborhood already had three sprawling gardens within walking distance of one another: Jardín Japones Jardín Botánico and Parque El Rosedal . Once it was the site of a grand, and very sad, city zoo, where iron cages kept lions, tigers and chimpanzees in cruelly small spaces. The zoo closed in 2016, and since then, the new owners have been converting it into a peaceful nature preserve, where peacocks and Patagonian maras — native, fleet-footed rodents — roam free. The zoo’s gorgeous, antique buildings also remain, their stateliness now an elegant contrast to the wild native plants and brush growing along footpaths. Entry is free.

☆ Why Prosecutors Waited Before They Charged Daniel Penny
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Maria Cramer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Mr. Penny was questioned by the police and released on the day Mr. Neely died, a decision that drew condemnation from many political leaders on the left and protesters. Witnesses said that Mr. Neely was behaving in a “hostile and erratic manner,” according to the police. The police arrived within six minutes of a 911 call, but several witnesses, including Mr. Vazquez, had left before they arrived. The medical examiner’s office did not rule on a cause of death until two days later. Mr. Penny was not considered a flight risk or a danger to the public.

☆ On the Right, Support and Donations Pour In for Daniel Penny
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-14 | by ( Maria Cramer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Little is known about the political views of Daniel Penny, the ex-Marine charged with fatally choking Jordan Neely on a New York City subway. But since Mr. Penny’s arrest on Friday on second-degree manslaughter charges, he has been quickly embraced by right-wing political figures and groups. A campaign to raise money for his legal defense — set up on GiveSendGo, a self-described Christian crowdfunding site that was also used to raise funds for some of those arrested in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — had raised more than $1.8 million as of Sunday night. In urging his followers to donate to the fund, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a likely Republican presidential candidate, compared Mr. Penny to the good Samaritan, a biblical figure who comes to the aid of a man who has been beaten, stripped of his clothes and left on the side of the road.

☆ In a Speech, Mayor Adams Says Jordan Neely’s ‘Life Mattered’
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Maria Cramer | Jeffery C. Mays | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

More than a week after the killing of a mentally ill man on a city subway, Mayor Eric Adams gave his most forceful comments so far about the death, saying it “never should have happened,” in a speech in which he also called for renewed investment in mental health services. But Mr. Adams continued to urge the public to wait for an investigation into the killing of the man, Jordan Neely, before drawing conclusions. In other recent cases, he has interjected his opinion quickly and expressed sympathy for the person he perceives as the victim, and suggested a course of legal action against the person he perceives as the perpetrator. But on Wednesday, he said that in the case of Mr. Neely’s death, “we have no control over that process.”“One thing we can control is how our city responds to this tragedy,” he said, adding, “One thing we can say for sure: Jordan Neely did not deserve to die.”Mr. Neely, a 30-year-old Black man and former Michael Jackson impersonator, was choked to death on May 1 by another passenger, Daniel Penny, who is white. His death could have been avoided if he had received more help as he struggled with mental illness, Mayor Adams said.

☆ In a Case Resembling Jordan Neely’s Killing, an Arrest Came Quickly
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Maria Cramer | Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Last year, on a spring evening, a 28-year-old man confronted a woman on a San Diego bus who was filming him with her cellphone, according to court documents. He grabbed the man, Anthony J. McGaff, 28, put him in a chokehold and held him for eight minutes, Mr. McGaff’s family said, until Mr. McGaff lost consciousness and died. Like the New York case, the victim in San Diego was Black and the man who killed him was white. A video captured by a subway rider shows Daniel Penny holding Mr. Neely in a chokehold for at least three minutes, including nearly a minute after he went limp. In San Diego, law enforcement officials arrested Mr. Hilbert within hours.

Mr. Penny has not been charged in Mr. Neely’s death and it is unclear if he will be. Mr. Neely’s death, they said, was an unnecessary tragedy that underscores the city’s inadequate policies toward its most vulnerable and marginalized residents. Mayor Eric Adams called Mr. Neely’s death “tragic,” but urged patience as officials complete the investigation. What happened on the F train? The police said they received a call at 2:27 p.m. on Monday about a fight on an F train at the Broadway-Lafayette Street subway station in Manhattan.

☆ A Subway Killing Stuns, and Divides, New Yorkers
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Emma G. Fitzsimmons | Maria Cramer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Almost as soon as the video of one subway rider choking another to death began to ricochet across the internet, the killing came to signify more than the tragic death of one man. For many New Yorkers, the choking of the 30-year-old homeless man, Jordan Neely, was a heinous act of public violence to be swiftly prosecuted, and represented a failure by the city to care for people with serious mental illness. Many others who lamented the killing nonetheless saw it as a reaction to fears about public safety in New York and the subway system in particular. And some New Yorkers wrestled with conflicting feelings: their own worries about crime and aggression in the city and their conviction that the rider had gone too far and should be charged with a crime. Now, as prosecutors continue to investigate the circumstances of Mr. Neely’s death, the case has become a political Rorschach test, dividing the city along long-simmering fault lines.

☆ In Deadly Subway Encounter, Questions of Mental Illness and Use of Force
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Maria Cramer | Chelsia Rose Marcius | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Most frequent riders of the New York City subway have seen people acting erratically on trains. Usually, they ignore them, move away from them or switch to another car. On Monday, one rider went up to Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old Michael Jackson impersonator who had been homeless for several years and was screaming that he was hungry and ready to die. Kathy Hochul said she needed to review the incident more closely but called the man’s death troubling. The incident comes as the city grapples with how to reduce both crime and the number of people with mental illness living on the streets, while also respecting the rights of its most vulnerable residents.

☆ Will the Police Commissioner Punish a Top Officer Defended by Adams?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Maria Cramer | Chelsia Rose Marcius | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The officer, Tabatha Foster, has filed a lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Queens in which she said that in the 2015 incident, Chief Maddrey had choked her and thrown her to the ground. Chief Maddrey has denied the allegations. If Chief Maddrey “gets a light punishment or no punishment at all, it is demoralizing to the hundreds of cops who have been given 25 days or 30 days for doing lesser things,” he said. “It shows the police are not held to a higher standard when they’re in the upper echelons of the Police Department.”An internal affairs investigation cleared Chief Maddrey, said his lawyer, Lambros Y. Lambrou. Mr. Lambrou called the police review board’s decision “complete nonsense” and said the chief wants the case heard in a department trial.

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