Notes from a cluttered mind

Episode 15: Attack of the Drones

1. When I heard this morning that a New York jury had acquitted subway good Samaritan Daniel Penny, the Marine vet who put Jordan Neely in a compliance choke hold after Neely threatened a bunch of passengers on a subway car, I was happy and relieved. Then angry. Very angry. This was a prosecution that never should have taken place. Not only was it clearly racially motivated — Penny, who is white, was charged in Neely’s death while two black passengers who aided in keeping the black Neely subdued were not — but it was an attempt by leftwing prosecutors in New York City to create a climate of fear for those who would presume to do the job the city government itself should be doing and keeping its citizens safe.

   

   Neely was on the street despite a long history of arrests and legal trouble, and despite a mental illness that may have contributed to his violent outbursts. The decision to try Penny on charges that could have landed him in jail for years was one that speaks to a trend among “restorative” justice advocates — leftwing, often Soros-funded prosecutors — to criminalize reactions to criminality while simultaneously reducing responsibility for criminality itself. From Alvin Bragg on down, a tiered justice system overcriminalizing the law abiding while mitigating criminal responsibility for certain repeat offenders has been installed to deconstruct and reconfigure our legal system to suit the perverse ideology of leftists who believe criminality is solely a function of historical situatedness, race, and class — the very ideas that have polluted our university curricula and turned once useful disciplines like sociology into pseudo-scientific data shaping operations in support of leftwing activism.