by Douglas Schwartz, American Thinker:
Without safe cities, including New York, the nation’s largest, America’s prospects are dim. Cities house over 80% of Americans, a figure that has risen steadily over time. The collective experiences of the 12 New York jurors selected to judge subway hero Daniel Penny provide insight regarding the city’s status. Penny is charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide by one of your favorite president’s favorite prosecutors, New York City DA Alvin Bragg.
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Juror #1 “has seen outbursts on the subway before” and “feels apprehensive about being physically threatened.”
Juror #4 ”has witnessed subway outbursts and has felt personally targeted.”
Juror #5 “has witnessed outbursts and has felt personally targeted.”
Juror #6’s “daughter was once assaulted in Times Square.”
Juror #7 “has seen outbursts.”
Juror #9’s husband “survived a street mugging . . . and said ‘Yes, of course’ she has witnessed subway outbursts.”
Juror #10 is a “woman who endured harassment on a near-empty subway car.”
Juror #11 “survived a robbery four years ago . . . he said he has witnessed outbursts.”
Juror #12 “has seen outbursts.”
Two jurors are attorneys, one female, one male. Given the facts of the case and jurors’ experiences, the likelihood of Penny’s conviction seems remote. The Penny trial echoes 1987’s Bernhard Goetz trial. Goetz was acquitted by a jury after having shot four black youths who allegedly attempted to rob him on a subway. 1980s subway robberies have largely been replaced by today’s mental health cases creating their own chaos. In Goetz’s era, 38 subway crimes a day were reported and the city’s annual murder rate hovered around 2,000. Those numbers are now down to 6 and 386, respectively. Rudy Giuliani won his first mayoral election six years after Goetz’s trial, beginning the city’s crime turnaround. The strength of the case against Goetz was orders of magnitude greater than the evidence against Penny, yet a New York jury refused to convict Goetz, victim of a previous mugging and beating, of attempted murder and first-degree assault. Ironically, with the recent assassination of Peanut the squirrel, Goetz went on to become a squirrel rescuer. One of his four shooting victims eventually committed suicide after serving 25 years for rape; another was in and out of prison.
Regardless of whether Penny’s jurors represent a random cross-section of New Yorkers, or reflect his counsel’s effort to stack the deck in his favor, when three-quarters of the jury has witnessed or experienced violence this confirms New York has a substantial, chronic epidemic of linked crime, mental illness, and street drugs, adding to reasons residents are fleeing the city.
Blame can be laid at the feet of the medical/pharmaceutical industry which decades ago proclaimed mental institutions obsolete thanks to drugs supposedly able to alleviate mental illness symptoms. The failure of legislatures and courts to forcibly confine the mentally ill, for their safety and ours, is the problem. Many afflicted individuals self-medicate with street drugs, including Jordan Neely, the deceased in the Penny case. Neely abused K2 (aka “spice”), which causes acute psychotic episodes, dependence, intense hallucinations, severe agitation, paranoid delusions, and violence. A journalist should investigate Neely to learn how he funded his drugs, including if he was on government assistance, and/or resorted to crime.
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