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It’s good that New York’s progressive elected officials and transit advocates are outraged by Jordan Neely’s killing on a Manhattan subway train Monday.
Neely’s life mattered — and so did the lives of the 27 other people violently killed on the subway since March 2020.
Where was the progressive outrage then?
It might have prevented the latest death.
Monday afternoon, Neely, 30, was menacing people on an F train in Lower Manhattan, according to witnesses, when another passenger put him in a chokehold.
The medical examiner has ruled the death a homicide.
It’s up to police and prosecutors — and, if it comes to that, a jury — to determine whether this killing was justified self-defense or just another subway murder.
Our progressive pols aren’t willing to wait.
“Jordan Neely was murdered,” concluded AOC, because he was “crying for food.” “People experiencing homelessness, mental illness, hunger, and frustration need and deserve compassion,” not “force,” tweeted city councilwoman Tiffany Caban.
“Does the Mayor, Governor, or any high-ranking MTA official plan to say anything about Jordan Neely’s killing today?” asked the author of a popular subway blog.
It’s good that the progressives are finally interested in a subway killing.
But before Neely’s death, from March 2020 until early April, 27 people lost their lives to murder in the subway, many of them, like Neely, were homeless young people.
Before 2019, it took 15 years for New York to rack up 28 murders on the subway, not three.
Where were AOC and Caban when homeless soccer player Akeem Loney, 32, was murdered by a stranger as he slept on the subway, in November 2021?
Where were they when Claudine Roberts, 44, also sleeping on the subway, was fatally knifed by a stranger earlier that year?
Oh, yes — Caban, even as four people were killed within a month last fall on the subway, including a union steamfitter and a Citi Field worker separately on their way home from work, was dismissing concerns about subway violence, calling it “a one-in-a-million event.
