Thanks for doing this. I wish more people would follow this example.
I try to accommodate everyone in my audience. 
What “liberties” was Neely taking? Shouting on the subway? What, the homeless don’t have free speech like the rest of us. What law was Neely breaking at the time of his death? Because for the life of me I haven’t heard of a crime being committed before three people held him down and one of them put him into a choke-hold. Being loud on the subway is not a crime. Being annoying is not a crime. Being homeless is not a crime. I don’t think Neely was the one breaking the law in this instance.
Some of us can’t join the military - I looked into when I was 18 and the recruiters were quite frank with me that between my allergies and my poor vision no, they would not take me. Sucks to be me I guess?
And, of course, a lot of those jobs the “help wanted” signs are offering don’t pay enough to live on - that’s why we have people who work full time who are still homeless.
Good for your father. I’m glad things worked out for him. Except of course that getting a “full time job at 13” is ILLEGAL and has been since 1938 but I suppose it was OK for him to break the law, right?
WTF does this have to do with someone being killed this week for being annoying on the subway?
^ This.
That’s… actually not a bad idea for combating poverty. You need more than just that, of course - things like a living wage and affordable housing - but it’s a start.
Also:
That’s bullshit. If Person A is victimized by Person B, then A was victimized by B, an individual who chose to act against them. Whatever reasons B had (or hallucinated) for their actions, they chose to do them, and A got hurt. By B, who chose to do so, and nobody else.
Claiming it was a “system” that fucked A over rather than B, the one who actually harmed them,does nothing but protect B at A’s expense so that B can harm C, D and E when B wants to, or when the voice in B’s head tells B to.
Your concern for B’s victims apparently doesn’t extend to holding B responsible for his or her own wrong actions against them.
Apparently, you have no experience with mental illness. Your words drip with ignorance.
As to your first statement, you really don’t know that about me, it’s not your concern or anyone else’s, and it has nothing to do with my point: if A assaults or otherwise harms B, it was A who did the wrong, and blaming it on a system just excuses A for his misdeeds at the expense of B and allows A to go on harming others. One thing I do know about mental illness is that it isn’t a justification for harming someone else.
It is entirely possible for a person to be a victim who then lashes out and victimizes other people. No one exists in a vacuum. Criminals do not simply randomly pop up in a field like mushrooms.
Trying to figure out why someone chose to commit a particular act is not the same thing as excusing that act, or holding them blameless, or not imposing consequences.
Here’s an analogy: someone runs through a stop sign, gets pulled over, and gets a ticket. When they go to court they bring a picture of the intersection and show the judge that someones hedge had grown up near the sign obscuring most of it and making it hard to see. The judge looks at it, says, well, you can still see enough of the edge of it to see there’s a stop sign but yeah, that’s going to make it harder for people to obey the law so I’m going to order that that bush be trimmed back so it will be much, much easier to see. But you, Mr. Driver sir, did in fact run a stop sign so you will still have to pay your ticket.
If circumstances are making it harder for people then yes, they’re more like to “run a stop sign” i.e. do something they shouldn’t BUT if you can remove problems/obstacles/bad circumstances they they are less likely to do that. Which is the whole notion of preventing crime by reducing the factors that lead to crime. You can only do that if you look into why people do these things.
And the outrage and tough-guy stances some posters are showing continue to ignore that the consequences here were wildly disproportionate to any action on Mr. Neely’s part, and that what he is known to have done in this instance does not in any way merit the death penalty.
Why are you all so damn terrified of other people?
The terror is fake, it’s just a cover for their bloodlust.
To torture your analogy (sorry), they want people running that stop sign so that they can use that as a justification to punish them. The overgrowth in front of the sign is intentional, and efforts at removing it will be resisted, as it’s not about the safety of the intersection, but the chance to hurt someone.
There’s a difference between “explanation” and “justification”.
Knowing why someone does something really should be a factor in how the consequences are handled.
If someone is driving, has a major seizure, and drives into a crowd of pedestrians that is definitely different than someone fully functional driving into a crowd of pedestrians even if, at the end, you might have the same number of dead and injured. Both actions absolutely do and should have consequences.
For the first, that might well be a medical workup, questions about whether this was a known risk and maybe that person shouldn’t have been driving, going forward medical treatment and possibly permanent revocation of driving privileges.
For the second, criminal prosecution, possible restitution to those harmed, and perhaps permanent loss of freedom or even life in some jurisdictions.
Why the difference? Because what we really want is for these things to not happen again. For person number one getting proper medical treatment is the appropriate response. For the second person, whose actions are not a result of a medical condition, a different response.
If someone is misbehaving due to a medical condition then that condition should be treated. That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be other potential consequences in addition, and it’s NOT an “excuse” or a “justification”.
Unfortunately, in our society, people with mental illness all too often CAN’T get proper treatment. That’s a shame and a stain on our society, whether those people cause problems for others or not.
We (people with a psychiatric diagnosis, and/or people whose cognitive and emotional state are viewed as problematic by others) can’t have it both ways, and we’ve fought long and hard for the right to choose our forms of treatment as consumers of psychiatric services, or to say no to it entirely as deliberate non-consumers who prefer our neurochemistry remain native and unchanged.
That does mean we bear responsibility for our actions, and although I’m critical of the whole criminal justice and cops way of dealing with problematic behavior, I’m totally on board with everyone being subject to the same rules and standards. It doesn’t become okay to harass, invade, or attack other people because of who you are, whether who you are is wealthy person, powerful politician, off-duty copy, or lunatic.
And there is a long way to go in that regard. Not everyone has the luxury of accepting or declining proper mental health treatment, many are either left out of the system, or are dealt with within the criminal justice system rather than getting mental help.
No one said it does, in fact, the post ahead of yours went to great pains to explain exactly that.
However, when incidents do happen, it is worthwhile to determine how to prevent them in the future, and that may mean understanding why someone does something that you wouldn’t have wanted them to do.
It’s absolutely not okay, I agree. I don’t think what my brother has done is okay. I don’t think it’s okay when anyone who is dangerous is allowed to be a danger.
However…
I disagree with this, and not just from a philosophical/moral perspective. It doesn’t work. As I said before, it’s malpractice. If a person commits a crime because they seek to gain from it, and believe they’ll get away with it, they are making bad choices and should be punished and hopefully rehabilitated. Hopefully they learn that no, they won’t get away with it, and it’s not worth it. You serve your crime and get released. Hopefully you won’t do it again.
If you commit a crime because your decision-making is impaired; you’re unaware of what you’re doing, confused, and so on, being imprisoned isn’t going to reform you. If you serve your time and get released, you’re not going to make better decisions. You’re still ill, and if that illness hasn’t been treated you’re likely to do it again, like a person who has been arrested 40 times and hasn’t gotten help.
I don’t believe mental illness excuses anything. Again, I related my experience with my brother. He tried to kill my mom. He has hurt a lot of people. He’s not in my life because I can’t trust him not to hurt my family. We’re estranged. I tried helping him financially for decades, I’ve tried guiding him to making better decisions, but it doesn’t matter. He’s sick and you can’t reason with an illness.
But if a person has something that impairs their decision-making abilities, that should inform what consequences are brought.
I know it’s complicated. Just as one example, drugs can help but they often have side effects, and those side effects can discourage people from using them. It’s not an easy solution.
I definitely don’t think a mentally ill person who was lynched just got what’s coming to them.
I don’t believe in vengeance. I don’t think anyone “gets what’s coming to them” in the sense that it’s wonderful that these bad things happened to them because that evens up the evil that they did, etc.
I agree that it’s complicated, but as a First Principles kind of thing I assert that when it isn’t compellingly clear whether someone is simply making choices you think are bad choices or that they’re incapable of making choices for themselves, you err on the side of letting them make their own choices. Even people with significant impairments in their judgment should have the leeway to make their own bad decisions and not be infantilized. I anticipate than when I’m in my 100’s I am going to want to go out to the sidewalk and head off on long walks. I may fall, I may get lost, I may have organ failure or get heat prostration or fail to see oncoming traffic clearly and step out in front of a truck. If those were the risks now, I’d opt to take my chances, and I’m sure that will be my preference when I’m 103. Nobody lives forever, and being kept indoors like a potted plant in a greenhouse is not better than being fully alive and more at risk. (Etc)
The judgment of “society in general” doesn’t automatically get to substitute, and in particular the so-called “expert opinion” of designated professionals doesn’t insofar as the latter have functioned as the Inconvenient People Police for far too long and far too ubiquitously to be trusted.
I’m on board with a method for people to indicate, when they’re in their right minds (and such isn’t under question by others), that if it comes to that, they wish to be protected from themselves more than they wish to be allowed to make their own perhaps-bad decisions, and that acts as a living will / health care proxy sort of thing. But the system of acting as if we can objectively determine that someone’s in need of “help” that they’re saying no to — and that our judgment is not in question when we decide to impose it — is deeply flawed.
The guy was held in a choke hold for 15 minutes until he died. That looks an awful lot like an execution.
Umm, aren’t you the one that EDCs a knife in her bra?
LOL 
- no, absolutely not! You clearly have confused me with someone else.
I don’t EDC any sort of weapon.
Also, I have never used my bra as a storage locker/tote bag/whatever.
Isn’t a tote bag it’s main function?
:flees:
I’m sure you don’t.
But…
ETA: Here’s another one!
And Penny’s lawyers blame the victim, releasing this nonsense:
“We would first, like to express, on behalf Daniel Penny, our condolences to those close to Mr Neely,” his lawyers said in a statement issued to US media.
The statement says that Mr Neely - a 30-year-old homeless Michael Jackson impersonator, “had a documented history of violent and erratic behaviour” which they said was “the apparent result of ongoing and untreated, mental illness”.
The lawyers add that Mr Neely had been “aggressively threatening” their client and other passengers, and that Mr Penny and others “acted to protect themselves, until help arrived”.
“Daniel never intended to harm Mr Neely and could not have foreseen his untimely death.”
Never intended to harm? Nope. Not true. A choke hold is an attempt to harm someone. And bonus points for bringing up the victim’s criminal history, something the killer could not have known about at the time.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/11/us/jordan-neely-new-york-subway-death-daniel-penny/index.html
Because manslaughter in the second degree is a class C felony, if you are convicted you could be sentenced to up to 15 years in state prison and be ordered to pay a substantial fine.