Soapbox
DANIEL PENNY IS A HERO
Jordan Neely was murdered…by NYC Democrats’ failures
Kayla Katin
Apparently, I’ve got to be the lone voice of sanity. The veteran Marine, Daniel Penny, was found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely, the homeless black man that he put in a chokehold on the subway in New York last year.
I see that people are well vexed about that, so I need to come and spit some facts.
The jury did the right thing. The ruling is correct. Penny is not guilty. The only problem is that he wasn’t cleared of the charges sooner. The injustice is that this trial was even a thing in the first place.
Here are the facts. Jordan Neely was being belligerent, and threatening, and launching at people, and throwing things on the fucking subway. He said that he was ready to die, wanted to go back to jail, and was going to fucking kill people. The people were scared on that train. The passengers were scared. The mothers were trying to cover their children. That is when Daniel Penny intervened and put Neely in a chokehold to restrain him.
And guess what? I really don’t see this being reported, but there were two other guys helping Daniel Penny to restrain Jordan Neely, and neither of them looks white. Plus, Penny’s fellow passengers, including a black man and black woman, have said that Neely was terrifying and that Penny did the right thing. Yet, for some reason, the media seized on a race narrative.
Maybe I’m mistaken but I’ve seen the video and it doesn’t look like that chokehold was strong enough to cause asphyxiation. The forensic evidence found that Jordan Neely was still alive when that NYPD finally pulled up. Cops refused to resuscitate him because he was dirty and the police understandably didn’t want to risk catching hepatitis or something. So, Jordan Neely died.
We found out that he had a fuck-ton of drugs in his system and he had underlying health issues. All of that predisposed him. But the chokehold and the stress from the struggle probably just pushed him over the edge.
Maybe he would still be alive if it weren’t for that chokehold, but it’s really unfair to try and pin his death on Daniel Penny. The intent clearly wasn’t to kill. And Jordan Neely had to be restrained in order to stop him from attacking the passengers and following up on his threats.
The media, like some fucking vultures hovering over a corpse, couldn’t wait to make this into a race issue based on literally nothing except for the skin colors of these two guys. Guess what? Around the exact same time, a black man, Jordan Williams, did basically the exact same thing as Daniel Penny, except he actually ended up stabbing the homeless guy to death, because the homeless guy was harassing the passengers on the subway and harassed his girlfriend. Jordan Williams walked free after a month, but this Daniel Penny trial took a whole year.
That’s smelling really fishy.
As a black woman in the New York area, who had a run-in with my own “Jordan Neely” last year, I am really, really, really fucking frustrated at all of this hashtagging for this nigga.
Last year on the very first day of school, I was in downtown Newark waiting for my bus home, and some lady started mumbling shit at me. At first, I was trying to reason with her, asking what was up. But then I realized, she’s too far gone, she’s clearly on some shit. So I backed away, putting some distance between me and this lady.
But she kept being belligerent toward me. I was basically just ignoring it until she pulled a fucking baseball bat out from her backpack and threatened me with it. I’m dead ass. And there were multiple fucking people standing around, also waiting at this bus stop with me, and nobody gave an F. Nobody came and did jack shit.
This went on for minutes and minutes. Eventually, one middle-aged lady did come to stand by me to protect me. She said that she has daughters my age so she felt sympathy for me. And then, finally, the bus came. I thought that would put a stop to this, but the fucking crackhead got on the damn bus with me. I thought maybe she would get out but no, no, no, she stayed on all the way to my town and got off at my same stop. Thankfully, my mom was waiting for me in the car, so I ran into that car and I told my mom what happened.
I am so, so, so, so fucking tired and frustrated by these race-baiting politicians and naive liberals, who act like some hugs and free cookies can solve all these altercations. The mentally-ill, drug-addicted, and homeless of the world can be dangerous and violent. And it's not, right or fair for the rest of us to be put in danger because of their problems.
The bitter, bitter, bitter irony of everyone calling Daniel Penny a white supremacist is that the people who are most put in danger by the Jordan Neelys of the world are other working-class black people who have no fucking choice but to use this shitty-ass public transportation.
As a black New Yorker, I will stand on this. Daniel Penny did nothing wrong. He’s a hero. He deserves a key to the city. Y’all are so desperate to follow a narrative and create another George Floyd that you’re just overlooking facts and justice and common sense.
The New York Democrats were so, so, so desperate to let Daniel Penny take the fall for their failures. They wanted this trial to be a distraction, a smoke screen from their failures to address drug addiction, homelessness, mental illness, and transit safety.
Those are all very real problems, and instead of being mad at Daniel Penny, we should be mad at the politicians. We need to get mad at the politicians, but they want to divert the people’s anger to cover their own asses. Pretending like that was an act of systemic racism is a really easy way to take our eyes off of the other systemic problems that they’re presiding over. Every single fucking politician and law enforcement official that participated in this sham trial of Daniel Penny should be required to pay him reparations out of their own damn pockets.
Oh, and I forgot to add: Jordan Neely’s family is disgusting and fake as fuck for coming out the woodwork to cry crocodile tears over his death, when they did nothing for him in his life. They didn’t give a fuck.
Some closing thoughts from my X account:
Kayla Katin is a YouTuber creating content centered around music, art, fashion, thrifty DIY, history, mental health, her Caribbean culture and her rock and metal subcultures—with some room for the occasional spicy sociopolitical take. She considers herself an Independent. She is an honorary New Yorker (New Jerseyan) currently in university to pursue an engineering degree. Follow her on TikTok (where a version of this essay first appeared as a video), on YouTube, on her X account, and Instagram.
Had he been found guilty, it would have ended anyone stepping up to help the helpless in these situations. Public transit would have gone from bad to worse.
Writer sounds Jamaican or somewhere Caribbean. Black people from foreign don't play black victim mentality.