America Is Obsessed With Vigilantism

When New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ responded to the killing of Jordan Neely last week, he all but said Neely’s mental illness was responsible for his own death. 

Neely, a 30-year-old unhoused street performer, died on May 1 after being choked out for 15 minutes by a former Marine named Daniel Penny. Video of the attack, posted on Facebook by  freelance journalist Juan Alberto Vazquez, showed two other men assisting Penny as he choked Neely, and Neely’s limp body on the ground after Penny released him. Neely was later declared dead at a Manhattan hospital, and the city medical examiner said Neely died as a result of the chokehold, ruling his death a homicide.  

Adams responded to the horrific video by saying that while “any loss of life is tragic,” there were “serious mental health issues in play here”—referring to Neely, not the man who choked him to death. Following Neely’s death, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander tweeted that New York “must not become a city where a mentally ill human being can be choked to death by a vigilante without consequence.” 

Adams later told CNN that it was “irresponsible” for Lander to call Penny a vigilante. 

The indifference to the death of a man who lived by all accounts a difficult life is part of a growing and disturbing strain of vigilantism in the U.S., following years of fear-mongering about crime in American cities and the dehumanization of unhoused people. 

Vazquez told Curbed that before Penny put Neely in a chokehold, Neely had been screaming that “he didn’t have food, that he didn’t have water,” and “that he didn’t care about going to jail.” As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose district includes Rikers Island, tweeted following Neely’s death: “We make living in jail easier than living out of it.”

Even before he was officially elected mayor, Adams was crowned by the national press and many Democrats as a new leader within the party, owing almost entirely to his promise to tackle crime more aggressively than his predecessor Bill de Blasio. Since taking office, however, what that plan has looked like is more funding for cops at the expense of other public services, and an approach to homelessness that advocates have described as inhumane. 

Last November, the mayor began a push to involuntarily hospitalize unhoused people. And in January, the Adams administration reportedly instructed the city’s homeless “drop-in” facilities to prevent unhoused young people from sleeping at the centers. 

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has launched an investigation into Neely’s death. But there’s still a lot we don’t know about the lead-up to the events shown in Vazquez’s footage. Penny was released at the scene, and it took several days for his name to even be made public. In a statement, Penny’s attorneys said that Neely was “aggressively threatening” him and other passengers in the car, and that Penny and others “acted to protect themselves until help arrived.” 

The mainstream press has been complicit in this indifference, and has sometimes amplified the voices of those applauding Penny’s actions. The Associated Press front loaded their coverage with a description of Neely, who was schizophrenic, “shouting” aboard the train car before he was placed in the chokehold that killed him. The New York Post called Neely an “unhinged man” in a tweet. In a piece about the “fierce crime debate,” Newsweek wrote that “many Americans” are “lost about what should happen to people who commit crimes if politicians and police aren’t handling crimes,” and then quoted an obscure Twitter user who posted that “We must exterminate the scum of society.” 

Meanwhile, right-wing pundits were remarkably cruel in their takes. Far-right troll Matt Walsh called Neely a “psychotic violent bum.”  One member of Fox News host Sean Hannity’s audience actually cheered when the host said Neely was “subdued” by a “Marine vet.” 

And former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who is now auditioning to fill the seat once held by Tucker Carlson, said after airing a video of Black people protesting Neely’s death: “Well, at least they have rhythm.” 

The killing of Jordan Neely has already drawn comparisons to a 1984 incident, where a man named Bernie Goetz shot four teenagers he claimed were attempting to rob him on the subway. But the more recent past helps explain why people have been emboldened to react to perceived threats this way, particularly when people of color and the homeless are involved.  

In 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two men and injured another who were protesting against police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after traveling to the city from his town in Illinois. Almost immediately, then-President Donald Trump defended his actions.  And after he was found not guilty of reckless homicide in 2021, Rittenhouse went on the right-wing speaking circuit and was offered internships by Republican members of Congress. 

On April 6, the owner of a convenience store in the heart of downtown Raleigh, North Çarolina 60-year-old Taiseer “Taz” Zarka, stabbed and killed 27-year-old Mark Garrity Jr., a white man he’d reportedly accused of stealing from his store. Zarka was finally arrested and charged with the murder two weeks later, after a public outcry and protest from Garrity’s family. 

Last month in Kansas City, an 85-year-old white man named Andrew Lester was charged with attempted murder after he shot a 16-year-old Black teenager who mistakenly came to his house while trying to pick up his brothers. Over the weekend, 58-year-old David Doyle, who is white, shot a 14-year-old Black girl in the back of her head when she hid on his Louisiana property during a game of hide-and-seek. Doyle has been charged with aggravated battery. 

And in April, after a Texas jury convicted a man who murdered a Black Lives Matter protester—a murder which happened weeks after the man posted, “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work” on Facebook—Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said, almost immediately, that he would seek to pardon the man. 

In San Francisco, DA Brooke Jenkins, a Democrat, last week declined to charge a Walgreens security guard in the April 27 shooting death of a 24-year-old Black transgender man who was allegedly shoplifting $15 worth of candy. In a statement, Jenkins said that video evidence “clearly shows that the suspect believed he was in mortal danger and acted in self-defense.”

But Jenkins has so far refused to release that video evidence because, she said, it’s part of an active investigation. Both activists and elected officials have demanded that Jenkins release the video. 

“The community is in pain and people are angry that this happened, especially with some of the information that’s come out and, at this point, I think it’s just really important to be transparent with the community so that people know what happened,” state Sen. Scott Wiener, who represents a district in San Francisco,  told CBS News about the shooting. 

All of these incidents have taken place in the context of a years-long, nationwide panic over crime in cities, rates of which have statistically mirrored an increase in crime in rural areas. And as they’ve faced increased political pressure, government officials have conflated crime with homelessness—and used the former as pretext for responding punitively to the latter.

As those measures from the government have inevitably failed to solve the social ills that cause and perpetuate homelessness and crime—poverty, inaccessible and unaffordable healthcare, and the lack of a broader safety net—we’re seeing more people self-deputize. And as is usually the case, the most vulnerable people will be the ones who suffer. 

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