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.  

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having shot four black youths who allegedly attempted to rob him on a subway.  1980s subway robberies have largely been replaced by today’s mental health cases creating their own chaos.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.

Years ago, the NY Times revealed 20% of mental patients housed in New York residential (rather than institutional) settings died annually.  Suicides, drug overdoses (this was long before fentanyl), and homicides were the primary culprits.  San Francisco reported similar outcomes.  “Of the 515 tenants within permanent supportive housing that were followed by the city, 25% died while in the program.  21% returned to homelessness, and 27% left for an unknown destination.”  Thus only 27% remained in provided housing.  If cities experience consistent increases in homeless populations, in spite of high death rates, this epidemic is far worse than anyone realizes.  Rather than solving problems, they are swept under one rug after another.

Society failed Jordan Neely, et al.  The “homeless” (i.e., institution-less) population is mostly a mental health/street drug crisis metastasizing over half a century.   When urban residents casually step over zombies’ bodies sprawled across sidewalks and doorways, a national conversation is long overdue.  What society callously disregards the welfare of so many, for so long?  Government contributes to this crisis by classifying addiction as a disease and funding addicts rather than mandatory treatment.  We subsidize armies of NGO’s supposedly serving the homeless, an industry with a vested interest in avoiding solutions.  There is a direct correlation between government spending on homelessness and the numbers flocking to such jurisdictions.  Prisons substitute for mental institutions closed long ago.

Solutions are obvious.  Forced institutionalization, isolated from illicit substances, is essential.  Liberals may whine, but allowing fellow humans to self-destruct is hardly compassionate.  We are a nation of enablers.  We pity them rather than providing tough love.  Nietzsche: “Pity is a waste of feeling, a moral parasite which is injurious to health.  It cannot possibly be our duty to increase the evil in the world.”  Pity contributes to suffering by enabling dependency, rather than self-agency.  Treatment, not Social Security checks, is required.

Money isn’t the question.  We already subsidize the problem, through prisons, Social Security, “homeless” funding, etc.  San Francisco’s homelessness budget passed $1 billion annually several years ago, yet the problem continuously increases.  The Hoover Institution noted San Francisco is smaller than Jacksonville, but its homeless spending “is nearly 80 percent of Jacksonville’s entire city budget.”  With annual expenditures approaching $60,000 per client, San Francisco is the poster child for how not to solve problems.  If money were the answer, there would be no problem.  Statewide, California threw $24 billion at homelessness over the past five years without bothering to monitor cost effectiveness.  Hint: the money made it worse.  Mislabeling a drug crisis as a housing issue doesn’t help.

Healthy (both physically and mentally) individuals don’t turn to drugs.  Trump’s unleashing of RFK Jr. to Make America Healthy Again holds great promise.  Reversing the sickness epidemic created by corporate adulteration of the food supply can only assist in reducing mentally illness numbers.  The malnourished seek drugs to assuage their cravings.  Unless addicts are nutritionally stabilized, treatment is pointless.

The Penny trial involves a white defendant accused of harming a black victim.  The racial grievance industry is quick to point fingers, but race has zero to do with this.  Nor did it have relevance to George Floyd’s death brought on by chronic substance abuse.  Except to delay finding actual solutions to the drug epidemic.

NY Post columnist Kirsten Fleming recently editorialized:

It’d be easier for us to all look away.  Ignore how our city’s disastrous, ‘compassionate’ policies toward the mentally ill and unhinged violent drug users have endangered everyday New Yorkers.  But one man didn’t look away during the chaos.  And he’s standing trial for it.

Douglas Schwartz blogs on history, politics, economics and gaslighting at The Great Class War.

Image: YouTube video screen grab, cropped.