The case of Daniel Penny and Jordan Neely has become a lightning rod in the ongoing debate over crime, mental health, and justice in New York City. Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, often criticized for straddling both sides of the aisle, came out swinging in defense of Penny, offering a rare and refreshing dose of common sense amidst the noise.
Let’s set the stage. Daniel Penny, a 26-year-old former Marine, restrained Jordan Neely on a subway train last year after Neely allegedly threatened passengers. Neely, with a long rap sheet and a troubled history of mental illness, reportedly made chilling declarations about hurting people and seemed bent on creating fear. Penny’s intervention, which tragically resulted in Neely’s death, has sparked a firestorm of controversy. The charges against Penny—second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide—could land him in prison for up to 15 years.
Mayor Adams defended Penny’s actions, reminding us that New York’s public transit system has devolved into a breeding ground for chaos and fear. Adams pointed out the obvious: those passengers were scared, and Penny stepped up when the system—and the city—failed to do so. For a Democratic mayor to acknowledge, this is a minor miracle in itself. Adams called it what it is—a failure of the mental health system that has been festering for decades.
“We’re now on the subway where we’re hearing someone talking about hurting people, killing people,” Adams said, referring to Neely’s alleged threatening behavior. “You have someone [Penny] on that subway who was responding, doing what we should have done as a city.”
Adams didn’t mince words when taking aim at the media’s portrayal of Neely. Pictures of a youthful Neely impersonating Michael Jackson have been paraded around to elicit sympathy, obscuring the grim reality of his violent and erratic behavior. According to Adams, this selective storytelling paints a distorted picture of the incident, turning public discourse into a lopsided narrative where nuance is sacrificed on the altar of outrage.
“Look at the photo that they used to show the victim,” Adams said, “It seemed like it was a young innocent child who was brutally murdered, and it gave that impression when you look at the photo that was being used. It wanted to set up in the minds of people that we were dealing with a young innocent child that was, you know, just a Michael Jackson [impersonator].”
The Daniel Penny saga just gets more and more insane: at the time of his death, there was a warrant out for Jordan Neely’s arrest – get this – for the assault of a woman on the subway. How this even went to trial is beyond me. pic.twitter.com/2kT64NS41w
— captive dreamer (@captivedreamer7) December 3, 2024
The elephant in the room here is the city’s deepening mental health crisis. Neely was failed by a system that shuttered psychiatric wards and left vulnerable individuals to fend for themselves. Adams himself has faced backlash from the Left for his 2022 proposal to hospitalize severely mentally ill people involuntarily. Yet his critics offer no real solutions, just hand-wringing and platitudes about compassion while people like Neely spiral further into instability—and into danger for everyone around them.
As jury deliberations approach, it’s hard not to see this case as a litmus test for the sanity of the justice system. Was Penny a Good Samaritan, acting in defense of innocent lives? Or will the legal system buckle under political pressure and make him the scapegoat for failures far beyond his control?
While Joe is in Africa after having pardoned his own son for 11 damn years of stealing money via fraud, not paying taxes and committing child rape 😲, Daniel Penny has to sit in a court room while 12 jurists determine his future because he restrained a criminal on a subway car 😳… pic.twitter.com/6Mk0Z5X3jx
— Todd With Trump (@THeinrich22) December 3, 2024
One thing is certain: this case isn’t just about two men on a subway. It’s about the choices we make as a society—whether we prioritize law, order, and accountability or continue to languish in a haze of failed policies and moral equivocation.
