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NICOLE GELINAS

Opinion


DANIEL PENNY’S INDICTMENT WON’T CHANGE THE ROOTS OF THE NYC SUBWAY-CRIME CRISIS

By Nicole Gelinas

June 15, 2023 | 7:47pm

Jordan Williams fatally stabbed Devictor Ouedraogo. Paul Martinka

If you need more evidence that charging Daniel Penny with manslaughter won’t
make a difference to our three-year-old subway-crime crisis, look no further
than the same day’s news: another slaying on the train, the fifth this year and
the third with the alleged killer claiming self-defense.


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Until we quell danger on the trains, we won’t stop people from reacting to that
danger.

Hours before a Manhattan grand jury indicted Penny Wednesday for the death of
Jordan Neely on an F train in May, deadly chaos unfolded on a Brooklyn J train.

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Yet another disturbed man with a violent history, 36-year-old Devictor
Ouedraogo, paced the car, removing his shirt and menacing passengers.

One witness said he threatened to “erase someone.” Police say Ouedraogo punched
a woman.

The woman’s companion, Jordan Williams, 20, fatally stabbed Ouedraogo; he, like
Penny, faces a manslaughter charge.

With one big difference: Williams, who is black, spent two nights in jail
awaiting arraignment, whereas Penny, who is white, remained free.

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(This is under a criminal-justice system progressives consider reformed.)

Daniel Penny’s case has been compared to Jordan Williams’. Matthew McDermott for
NY Post

And Penny benefited from support and donations from around the world — meaning
he can afford to go to trial.

Williams’ case risks being lost as just another subway “dispute” homicide,
minority on minority.

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Unless national conservatives take him up, too, as having had no choice but to
defend himself and others, he may be forced by financial considerations to take
a plea.


SEE ALSO


I HOPE DANIEL PENNY INDICTMENT WON’T STOP GOOD SAMARITANS — LIKE THE ONES WHO
HELPED ME — FROM ACTING

Progressives have no interest in Williams, but they are pleased the grand jury
indicted Penny because they see it as racial justice, holding a white man to
account for killing a black man.

Fine; it’s up to a trial jury to decide whether he’s guilty.

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But by focusing on punishment and not prevention in Penny’s case, all
progressives have done is ensure more minority men are killed on the train — and
other minority men are charged in their killings.

Most deadly subway “disputes,” including self-defense claims, reflect subway
demographics — that is, minority on minority.

That’s the case not just in the newest one but with the year’s first claim of
self-defense. 

In April, 25-year-old Mark Smith stabbed 18-year-old Isaiah Collazo to death on
a Brooklyn D train, after a dispute arising from the fact that Collazo’s friend
pulled the emergency brake.

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A grand jury refused to indict Smith, agreeing he acted in self-defense. But not
before he got entangled in the criminal-justice system.

Williams’ mom began a GoFundMe for him, like the one started for Penny. Paul
Martinka

Progressives usually love root causes and systemic problems.

So you would think they’d see three claims of self-defense homicides on the
subway in three months as a . . . systemic problem with root causes?

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The problem isn’t whether any of Williams, Smith or Penny was justified in his
deadly actions.

It’s that we have five dead men on the subways this year, and most would be
alive if we were securing subways as we did until 2019.

Ouedraogo’s killing Tuesday is the 30th subway homicide since March 2020.

Before 2020, it took 15 years for 30 people to be killed on trains.

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Though subway robberies and assaults are down over the past few months, homicide
has accelerated, from seven killings each in 2020 and 2021 to 11 last year.

We are tolerating more subway disorder — and some of it inevitably turns deadly.

To assess disorder, look at fare-evasion stats. Fare evasion went from an
estimated less than 4% of riders in 2019 to more than 11% this year.

We have known for 30 years that when you stop fare beaters, you stop disorderly
people before they terrify a train full of people.

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People who aggressively beg, who rant that they are going to kill someone, who
punch or slash strangers, who stick needles into their arms in view of other
passengers did not pay their fares.

It is government’s job to aid the severely mentally ill. But whether the state
and city do that job or not, the severely mentally ill do not belong in the
subway, where people can’t escape them.

Police are writing more tickets for fare evasion — through April, 45% more than
in 2019 — but it’s not enough to reduce the disorder the city allowed to fester
over three years.

It also doesn’t help that, with prosecutors not criminally enforcing recidivist
farebeating, a civil fare-evasion writeup is just a paper tiger.

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What do you think? Post a comment.

Even before 2019, half of tickets went unpaid.

Reduce the fear pervading the subway, and you reduce chances that
people react to disorder to defend themselves, whether justifiably or not.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City
Journal.


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