Two vigilantes

 

In May 2023, Daniel Perry took down Jordan Neely, an erratic homeless man who was making wild threats on a New York subway car. Perry then killed Neely by strangulation.

Police reacted nonchalantly to the Perry-Neely killing, at first letting Perry go without charges.

In December 2024, Luigi Mangione fired bullets at the back of a prominent accountant, Brian Thompson, who was minding his own business on a midtown Manhattan street.

Police mobilized an intense manhunt for the Thompson killer, with the police commissioner appearing daily flanked by a phalanx of top NYPD officials vowing to track down the threat to the business district’s reputation for safety.

Perry’s defense fund quickly raised $1.5 million from people who cheered his permanent removal of the subway ranter. Tabloid news coverage noted that he was an ex-Marine, more for the heroic aspect than the implication that he knew how to kill people.

Other New Yorkers were uncomfortable with the extreme action. Dealing with unhinged riders on the underground trains is a daily occurrence for anyone who rides them regularly.

While we’re always wary of how things can get out of control, nearly all of the mentally ill passengers are merely exasperating. (There are exceptions.) We give them a wide berth or move to another car.

The hundreds of uniformed NYPD and MTA agents swarming the platforms don’t ever seem willing or authorized to do anything about the assorted monologuists and dazed spirits. One occasionally sees security talking to a lost soul in the station, getting them to stand up from their squats, or nudging people unconscious on the platforms or sound asleep at the system’s terminal stations.

But I have never once seen police climb onto the subway itself and remove someone causing a disturbance, (illegally) flogging chocolates to every rider one by one, or preaching The Word to a captive audience.

I’d support them if they did.

I’d be even gladder if the city ever figured out how to attend to the untold thousands of mentally ill people who have taken up residence in the subway system in the absence of anywhere else to go. We certainly spend enough city cash on policing the place with the very inadequate results we all can see.

Perry was acquitted yesterday just as Mangione was nabbed at a Pennsylvania Macdonald’s. The latter can expect to get a multi-decade sentence for his act and didn’t seem terribly eager to get away with it, given his indifference to the horde of incriminating evidence he was still carrying around.

From early accounts, Mangione was moved to commit homicide by the state of our health payment system, which empowers people like his victim to engage in financial legerdemain that enriches accountants while denying people the healthcare they pay enormous sums to obtain—sometimes resulting in their deaths.

Maybe he’ll express disdain for the judicial system that lets people off while the elites get away with, well, murder.

Assassination is not a good way to address injustice (ask the Mexicans). Then again, when other avenues are cut off, we can’t be surprised to see it occur.