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Peter7136's avatar

This is the best commentary I’ve read on the Neely-Penny case. The problem at base is, indeed, involuntary commitment or the lack of it. The case was never about race, although some want to divert it there for their own agendas. New York City, and particularly the subways, are teeming with the mentally ill. Not all, of course, are dangerous, but some are, and there seems to be no legal way to prevent their having free rein to terrorize the rest of us. We all understand the need for properly controlled institutions and that we should never return to the old cruel asylums. But it is also cruel to leave people to live on the street who cannot care for themselves. It is also cruel to the rest of the population who has to try and avoid the violently insane who churn through the legal system. Neely had been arrested 42 times. Unfair to him, to the police who have to keep arresting him, and to everyone who had to fear what he might do next.

I hope Ritchie Torres and/or Eric Adams can do something about this, but I expect our judiciary is going to have to revisit the whole patient rights standards that have led to this sorry, and dangerous, state of affairs.

This article at least lays out the history of how we got here, and may be a first step to reevaluation.

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David Link's avatar

A good and quite fair overview of the problem. I'd add one driving factor to the analysis: the role of the ACLU in advocating very strongly for the individual right to refuse treatment. It was the ACLU, in fact, in cooperation with then Governor of California Ronald Reagan, whose voice was strongest in urging closure of the then quite horrific institutions -- in exchange, as you mention about JFK, for money that would pay for better institutions in the future.

I don't know if the ACLU has changed its stance, but a "right" that the seriously mentally ill can meaningfully invoke while lacking ordinary reasoning capacity is a mirage of what liberty guarantees. And the consequences of that ruin of an argument are all around us.

But that is not the only damage that's been done by well-meaning advocates. Like all prosecutors, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has fundamental discretion to bring a case to trial or not. While I have to assume his office believed that Mr. Neely was a worthy victim, DA Bragg was tone deaf to the fact that Mr. Penny was acting as any reasonable person in that situation would. The measure of any potential negligence in his actions was far outweighed by the recurring problem of the homeless mentally ill in New York's subways and elsewhere.

Bragg's mistaken view of his city's residents is now obvious, but it comes from a place of misplaced empathy. Bragg's focus was on Mr. Neely, and it obscured any feeling for the people who ride the subway every day. How could any jury of Mr. Penny's peers not have seen that?

I hope it's now time to fulfill the promises of those original bargains, and to see that the billions of dollars being spent on so many programs asserted to help those with serious mental illness have always had a logical and socially beneficial end that has been ignored.

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