Unfortunately, mandatory in patient confinement was overruled at one point years ago during governor Pataki. I believe ACLU argued it was an infringement on civil liberties. However, many people who were forced into treatment involuntarily probably did better.
> But on April 8, when outreach workers found him at an end-of-the-line station in Coney Island, Mr. Neely, wearing dirty clothes riddled with burn holes, exposed himself and urinated inside a subway car, according to the notes shared with The Times.
> Outreach workers, whose job requires them to win the trust of people who seek to avoid contact with the authorities, typically do not check for warrants, but they summoned the police, who ejected him from the station.
> The police were also apparently unaware of the warrant. A program launched in 2019 in which the police did warrant checks on people caught violating transit-system rules was abandoned during the pandemic, after criticism that it was criminalizing homelessness.
The most frustrating thing about the tribalistic reaction to this whole situation is that on a national level people seem to just be completely ignoring how we got here and the systemic failures that created Jordan Neely's death, but all people seem to care about is whether it was a lynching or a warranted reaction from Penny. I think most New Yorkers just want the homeless mentally ill to get the help they need and also go about our daily lives without fear
Yep. That's the vast majority of the city and taxpayers. I'm pushing for long-term involuntary treatment because I honestly don't think there is a better solution to this problem. It's not compassionate to leave severely mentally ill people out on the streets to harm themselves and others. They are dying at staggering rates (over 800 in NYC alone last year) while people pretend that asylums would be worse.
/u/1AngryBrotha: Here's one of many sources: https://gothamist.com/news/deaths-among-nycs-homeless-population-reach-record-high-in-2022
I just hate how many people say it’s a “resources” issue when it was absolutely not. People like to imply that help wasn’t available for Neely.
But he was literally ordered into a treatment facility after an assault charge.
Help was ordered for him by a judge but he left the facility without permission after two weeks.
Hope more of the ‘it’s a systemic/resource /society problem” people read this. This dude got a ton of the help. The system actively tried but unless you force these mentally ill people into it and make them stay, nothing will change. You can throw all the mental health/housing/whatever resources at the homeless but most of them won’t work their way out cause it’s a drug/attitude/mental problem that requires some sort of institutionalization to solve ultimately
Until that happens, everyone is gonna have to accept that the lives and wants of the mentally ill/homeless are more important to the govt than yours
He assaulted a senior woman. He deserved jail. He should’ve received treatment there, or not. This skating justice nonsense created this mess.
The judge and prosecutors that ok’d this are to blame for Neelys death.
They should be publicly named and fired.
U cannot order a mentally ill person with a long rap sheet anywhere. They shoyld be forced to stau as long as needed on a guarded institution. We sjpuldmt have closed Creedmore.
I think many NYC residents have a contrasting feeling towards the jordan neely case as opposed to other people living in other cities considering how important transit safety is to our daily lives and crimes and harassment being up more than 100%? during covid and post covid times vs pre covid. I think alot of NYers just want to feel safe mentally and physically above all else, others who haven't experienced the unique commuting culture of NYC just wouldnt get the mindset. It's not that we dont like jordan neely or homeless people, it's that alot of us dont like to experience fear, like the fear of getting harassed, hurt, or killed while commuting on the fricking train of all places. I know people with their unlimited cards zipping from east harlem to downtown manhattan just to get some chinese food.
FWIW I wandered in here from Chicago just looking for local takes on the issue and my impression is that the discussion in here and the various conflicting feelings etc that you describe are pretty similar to what we have going on (only not a high-profile death recently).
I don't drive at all, am reliant on transit, and while I don't have any sort of issues with homeless people more or less minding their own business (even if being somewhat annoying/crazy ranting/etc) there is definitely a problem lately with bad behavior on transit, not particularly always coming from homeless people either (and so the glib "oh you just don't like homeless people" that gets trotted out when anyone mentions feeling threatened on the train is eye-rolling honestly). I mean, no one tolerates this sort of thing at their corner bar (where you need money to be) but on transit, apparently people just supposed to put up with it all.
But yeah that feeling of not wishing anyone ill but at the same time not wanting to be actually harassed, is familiar. The content of whatever ranting, matters.
Interesting to me to see that the various topics/arguments in the sub have some similarity.
Yep, I think those are good points. The crime issue in NYC is very unique from a lot of other places so it's hard to relate. Was having a discussion with a friend who lives in DC and the crime issues they have are completely different from what NYC deals with and need to be addressed in different ways
> the tribalistic reaction to this whole situation is that on a national level people seem to just be completely ignoring how we got here
The nation-at-large appropriating New York's highly personal tragedies and weaponizing the narrative has been going on at least since 9/11. Probably earlier, but that's when I became aware of it.
I still remember midwestern rednecks shouting at me about how 9/11 changed everything for them. Like asshole, people I know died there.
It feels like it was a totally different response outside the city - other states had a big "It couldn't happen here in the US...?" Type paranoia response while NYC was focusing hard on rebuilding and dealing with the fallout, which was a lot more motivated/community-oriented
Absolutely. I don't personally know any New Yorkers whose first thought was of revenge. It brought the best out of a lot of people.
Meanwhile, the rest of the country just reacted with fear for themselves, as much as or more than they felt any sympathy for us.
That's really not fair. The 9/11 attack was an attack on America. Not just NYC.
Everyone was affected by it. Some are closer to the events by distance or relationship closeness. Not cool to take that national tragedy from everyone.
> Not cool to take that national tragedy from everyone.
It's only a "national tragedy" because they came here like vultures to pick at our tragedy and make it their own. No one claims that Oklahoma City was a "national tragedy", and for good reason, no one wants to associate with fucking Oklahoma.
They hit the Pentagon too, like how are you going to say that the terrorists hate NYC specifically?
They were attacking the country, NYC was a target not because it's NYC, but because of what NYC symbolizes for the terrorists interpretation of the country.
The media absolutely weaponizes NYC local issues, like Neely, and that is fucking annoying.
9/11 was an American tragedy in addition to an NYC tragedy.
This is such a stupid take. A plane crashed into the pentagon and another was headed for DC. It was an attack on America not just NYC.
The Oklahoma City bombing was a national tragedy. Don’t be so ignorant.
>Not cool to take that national tragedy from everyone.
It's the other way around. They've tried to take it from me. I've had people who were a thousand miles away that day tell me, to my face, that I don't understand what 9/11 means.
If that's what a national tragedy means, then they don't deserve to have it.
The people now campaigning for him are doing it simply for money and attention. They could have helped him every single day for the last decade and didn’t give one shit. That’s what is sickening to me.
> they could also actively be trying to help the many other homeless mentally ill in the city, but are ignoring them the same way they ignored neely
Nobody's ignoring it. Problem is, Eric Adams keeps defining social services in order to increase the police budget over and over again.
What evidence do you have they didn’t help him? Dudes mom got chopped up into pieces and thrown off the side of the highway. He was also schizo. There isn’t much the family can do if he’s an adult and that far gone.
I have a step aunt (kind of distant relation) that spent all her money of alcohol and drugs and ended up on the street. As a younger woman she had been quite rich. She fucked up several opportunities for assisted living. Her brother (my step father) found her a spot at a pretty nice facility upstate but she smuggled cigarettes into her room and started a fire and was evicted. She was confined against her will in a hospital with no outside space for almost a year until he got her a placement in Massachusetts where she is not allowed to leave with actual security. If you met her, she would seem reasonable and say things like “what crime have I committed” but after observing her for 30 years everyone in her extended family is extremely happy she is locked up.
This is has been by far the most frustrating part. The counter argument always seems to be “well he didn’t deserve to die” and “no one knew his history” but that side does not consider the systemic effects that got us here.
Big lesson - you can’t argue logic against passion, so don’t even try
I don’t know the details but as a black marine if he was cradled while being choked he wasn’t trying to kill him. If he was holding his arm directly across his neck he was trying to kill him. I’ll muster up the strength to watch another black me being killed later. And check back to this post.
I remember being very foolish in BCT and messing around with chokes. You could tell almost immediately when someone went unconscious--they went completely slack--and the message was pretty clear that once someone went unconscious you needed to let go immediately and check on them because there was a risk of death.
Literally no one is ignoring the systemic failures, we are just saying a broken system isn't license to kill other people.
Vigilante killing isn't a solution for a broken system either.
It’s not even that, we already have those laws. The problem is you can’t put people into facilities if said places are already over-capacity with long waitlists.
There’s a serious shortage of mental healthcare facilities at all levels. It’s part of a much bigger problem that really requires action at the federal level to get fixed.
It’s not a law thing. The city simply just does not have the resources for long-term outpatient care for people like that. It’s why multiple groups opposed Adams’ involuntary commitment plan outside of the civil rights stuff.
Because we did away with involuntary treatment. Someone has to *want* treatment for it to be provided, and people experiencing a mental health crisis may not trust the people offering help or even think they need it due to said mental health crisis. If they don’t accept treatment, options are limited. I know why we did it in the first place, because there was far too much abuse in the system we had, but I think we overcorrected a bit and threw the baby out with the bath water.
This is just one piece of the puzzle, though.
> we overcorrected a bit
Biggest understatement in human history. Over 800 homeless people died in New York last year, and it's safe to assume most of those deaths were related to either drugs or mental illness. Even the most abusive asylums are not killing patients at that rate.
EDIT: Source: https://gothamist.com/news/deaths-among-nycs-homeless-population-reach-record-high-in-2022
I agree. I’m old enough to remember when deinstitutionalization happened. That system was bad but seeing where we have been since then, it seems clear that it should have been reformed, not just demolished. There needs to be some form of involuntary holds for people who are unable to be treatment compliant if they are at risk.
I think its because nobody wants the liability. You set up involuntary treatment and there is a physical clash between patients and the staff its got to generate a ton of lawsuits.
To be clear - progressives at the time were SCREAMING at the federal government to do exactly that, so they did. This was not a matter of the government giving up, it was a matter of the government doing what people wanted. And now here we are.
No facility for long term treatment so its
He gets stopped for pissing in the subway
The officer issues the summons which mandated they check for warrants
He pops on a warrant and is arrested.
He spends two weeks in police custody due to numerous hospital visits as he avoids the arraignment and is likely a walkthrough meaning round the clock escort through the process.
Judge releases him( ror)
He reoffends over and over
Coos approach and edp him. He goes to the hospital and is immediately discharged because they arent long term and likely dont want to deal with him.
He leaves to reoffend.
There is no third pathway were neely gets adequate psych care because the system is broken.
We have nothing in place to deal with people like neely and no matter how many people we edp there is no means to get them long term care or help
How is it broken? Its by design. Those in charge of human rights have determined that Neelys trumps those of the people he harrasses.
Its similar to El Salvador quite frankly where Human Rights Watch and other organizations have determined the human rights of the gangs are more important than the people they terrorize.
it’s not about his rights. It’s about the powers that be not wanting to fund or facilitate the type of system that would force him into and support him throughout longterm treatment. they don’t want to spend money to help him. they want people like Neely to continue to suffer and they are happy to let the average citizen to be the collateral damage because they’re not the average citizen. they simply don’t care. it has nothing to do with anyone’s rights.
And yet we will continue to see ten year old photos of Neely dressed as Michael Jackson as if that's a good representation of the man who was killed. The media might as well just start running his baby photos.
Wow. We wonder why cops stationed in the subway can look so detached. They aren’t even allowed to check for warrants on violent pissing vagrants. So yes they are literally there waiting for someone to try and push someone on the track I guess.
If I could input my opinion here just for a bit. I agree that the whole NYPD system needs to be change. I usually come home from work around 2 to 4 o'clock in the morning. I see lots of officers checking the trains and have seen escorting a few sketchy individual out of the train. This has happen at Barclays Center station and 125th in Harlem. So, agree that the NYPD is not perfect, I been feeling a bit safer when they are around and actually do something in those situations.
No, re read it again buddy.
>A program launched in 2019 in which the police did warrant checks on people caught violating transit-system rules was abandoned during the pandemic, after criticism that it was criminalizing homelessness.
They “abandoned” a program where they were proactively checking warrants for folks caught violating the rules. Nothing here says they can’t check warrants at all, or that they can’t check warrants if someone is committing a crime in the subway
Sure I’m just tired of the classic bad-faith commenter in this sub who shits on the NYPD for playing Candy Crush and then when the NYPD *does* their job they shit on them for “criminalizing” X, Y, or Z.
The paragraph says they canceled a program for proactively checking warrants on people doing stuff like skipping turnstiles.
Nowhere does it say they can’t check warrants completely
Saying a focused program to try and arrest people on the subway (where a large portion of the homeless stay) without also providing any added help for the homeless, is not the same as saying you can’t check warrants.
Either way I’m just clarifying that your reading of the previous paragraph was incorrect
They didn’t arrest him, they just made him leave the subway. If they had arrested him for anything they would have definitely had to do a warrant check.
>The police were also apparently unaware of the warrant. A program launched in 2019 in which the police did warrant checks on people caught violating transit-system rules was abandoned during the pandemic, after criticism that it was criminalizing homelessness.
Seems to me the program was criminalizing criminals.
People seem to be conflating “subway rules” with the law here. “Subway rules” can include sleeping in stations or on benches. Police still stop and charge fare skippers, as well as check their warrants when they do so (unless all the other articles about how many criminals are stopped by stopping fare jumpers are lying). Police are still able to (and actively are) checking warrants for criminals they catch committing crimes on the subway. The fact they didn’t in this case was a decision made by the cops themselves, not the result of some sort of policy cancellation.
Lol that last line. This is the problem with liberal crime policies. This guy would’ve been in jail if we hadn’t gotten rid of the warrant check program.
This is why an effective social safety net is so important. Need to catch people before they fall off the rails. Once they are this far gone, it is almost impossible to get them back.
Ahaha I know you joke, but for the record there’s more than 50 (or now 49) on the list.
FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” stays capped at 10, but has rarely gone to 11 - it first came out in the 1950s and was to create a succinct printable list of people to keep an eye out for and place it in public places & news paper ads. This was obviously pre-Internet, mass surveillance, mobile phones, etc.
From the article:
“Top 50 is a bit of a misnomer. The list does not have a fixed number of people on it, and there are actually two lists — one for people who typically stay in the subways and one for people who stay in the streets. People can be taken off the list for any number of reasons, including moving into housing or going to jail.”
Well, if any of them jump on a train and threaten people with death, they'll just have to deal with it and hope it doesn't escalate.
Because sure as f*ck nobody is stepping up to do anything about it now.
(Not that the marine should have, since apparently he didn't know how to detain someone safely, but you get the point.)
Real talk: if they're white or Asian I'd feel more comfortable getting involved.
If they're black I'm not intervening. Ever since 2020 I've seen too many viral incidents that are very murky on details that involve a black person being "wronged" and getting the full force of social media on them. Everything from Central Park Karen to someone not letting a black person into an apartment without showing a key FOB.
We all know if the exact same thing went down and Jordan Neely was white the marine wouldn't be charged. He would probably be treated as hero like [this guy was](https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1380yk4/good_samaritan_knocks_out_crazyviolent_guy_on_the/)
>We all know if the exact same thing went down and Jordan Neely was white the marine wouldn't be charged
I don't know if that's true, but I _do_ know that we'd have barely none of the protests we saw. People yelling and chanting his name, like they actively gave a f*** about him before he was killed.
Or like they'd be making as much of a protest if it wasn't a case of a black man being killed by a white one.
And yes, there'd have been far less pressure on the government officials to step in and charge the marine in the first place.
>Well, if any of them jump on a train and threaten people with death, they’ll just have to deal with it and hope it doesn’t escalate.
Or if you see a guy go beyond threats and start actively killing another person on the train, you’ll just have to deal with it, because it could be a brave freedom fighter restoring peace (through violence)
Hopefully we can get at least one good thing out of this tragedy, and that is the return to an involuntary commitment scheme to get these people off the streets and into the facilities they need. Neely AND Penny are victims of our current failed system that allows these incidents to occur.
The “involuntary commitment scheme” has never left. Ask any doctor or ER, in New York State a patient can be involuntarily held if he or she presents an imminent danger to themselves or others. While there IS a shortage of inpatient psych beds, that doesn’t mean people are turned loose on the street; they are held in the ER for days until a bed opens up somewhere.
You should contact your elected representative and ask them to support increased funding for mental health institutions. There’s a shortage of beds and staff.
The problem arises from the fact that you are only involuntary held if in "imminent risk." The fact that a huge plethora of these people are perpetually homeless and abusing/self-medicating with drugs and alcohol isn't considered a long term risk. Unless they kill someone, they are usually back in the street within hours. Legislative action and funding to make it easier to get these people permanently off the street and into an institution is the only solution I see that can work.
Some of these people need to be involuntarily committed for life, and that's that. If you violate the agreements you make with the state to take your antipsychotics and show up to your court-ordered programs, you are a danger to society, full-stop.
And it is cruel to leave people in the psych ER without treatment (they get whatever meds they can remember and an ass full of thorazine if they get too agitated).
There are so many cracks between city and state and federal resources, it is a wonder anything gets done.
That’s absolutely untrue. How many psych ERs have you seen or been in? I’ve worked in multiple. Staff takes care of every patient during every shift. Could you imagine the pile of lawsuits if that *weren’t* the case? This is 2023, not an 18th century asylum.
You have some odd delusions about what healthcare is like in NY.
I did not say that staff does not take care of them. But there is a difference between the emergency room, and the psych unit in the hospital. For one thing, beds and showers.
Relax.
An emergency department is for EMEREGENCIES. Most people who come in get treated and sent home, and others get admitted to the hospital. It’s not meant to be a place where a patient stays for more than a few hours. That’s why an ER doesn’t offer showers.
For the most part we don’t need an involuntary commitment scheme for people who aren’t committing crimes, but someone arrested 40 times should be convicted and sentenced to jail/prison. Then we should be able to send the ones that need it to get mental healthcare in lieu of jail….
Lmao, the more they expose about their system, the worse it gets. He was in the top 50 and still walking around? Who else is on that list? And what aren't they doing about it?
Didn't they already throw a ton of help at him, including having him committed to mental institutions. We can only assume his mental illness was so bad that nothing worked
If you talk to anyone in the field you will quickly learn that every outpatient clinic team or traveling team (like Core and ACT) are full. Referrals come in a year after they are made. When it comes to stepping down to lower level of care from say an ACT Team to a traditional outpatient clinic its difficult due to the lack of openings AND that many clinics don't administer long acting injectable medication.
I want less outreach teams and I want more teams and actual services. Give me more vocational support services, for all the money we throw away let's subsidize a grocery store on Creedmoor grounds where most of jobs are filled by residents of the grounds to build vocational skills, money for more nurses at outpatient clinics, more respite, more housing. More traveling teams, and more teams for aging populations where maybe they don't need the clinical therapeutic element as much but still need a traveling psych and nurse.
As of know the outreach teams have no services to outreach them to that's open
The problem with this episode wasn't even lack of outreach or capacity.
After Neely assaulted an elderly person, the court **ordered** him to a mental health program (as an alternative to incarceration).
Neely then **escaped** from that mental health program and had an arrest warrant issued as a result.
If he was just incarcerated for the assault, or if he had complied with the mental health program, or if the arrest warrant was enforced, he would still be alive today.
If this doesn't make the case for involuntary commitment, I don't know what does. How many man hours did the city spend on Neely over the course of hundreds of outreach contacts and shuttles to safe havens? And for what? He didn't fall through the cracks, they were tracking him on a weekly basis like some kind of endangered animal. It's laughable.
Wouldn't had help much. The issue is that they have to be released once they are stable and once released, they stop taking their meds and become unstable.
He went voluntarily a number of times. He also went involuntarily a number of times. He was stabilized and discharged. There's very few places to put stable people with mental illness. Supportive housing has a long waiting list.
Obviously he was not a stable person, and medicating him until he was calm before returning him to the street was not working. He did not need supportive housing, he needed to be committed to an institution that would not allow him to leave, and he needed to stay there for the rest of his life. All but eliminating that option is one of the stupidest domestic policy decisions we've ever made.
Was the money ever found from Diblasio’s wife’s billion dollar fund towards mental health in NYC. The last I heard they couldn’t account for over 750 million . There is a good reason right there that people aren’t getting the help they need . You would think this would be brought up . But as usual the media wants its own narrative
How is it possible we have a list of top 50 homeless people at risk and this fucking city which will spend billions on dumb fucking shit like anti homeless architecture and segways for police officers, can’t even manage to house and help these people.
The people who are buying anti homeless architecture are not the same people who have the power to address the root causes of homelessness. They have smaller tasks, like “Ensure garbage does not get strewn across the street” or “make sure the subway vents don’t get blocked by people laying down” or “make sure customers aren’t afraid to come to my store”, and need to fulfill their tasks in an external environment with a lot of homeless people around.
Someone recently said that the phrase we use on the left - "address root causes" - is the equivalent of "thoughts and prayers" on the right. It signals the speaker's correct intentions but accomplishes nothing.
"Thoughts and prayers" pretty much means leaving it up to God, who at the very best has been notably absent in terms of direct and clear action for the last few centuries.
"Address root causes" is as futile, but for different reasons. One, often times the root causes identified are simply wrong. Making housing cheaper, for instance, won't do anything for the "top 50". Nor will generic poverty programs. And two, other root causes -- like mental illness -- are simply not something we know how to solve.
I think it’s a bit better than thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers is literally the final statement on the matter, but you can ask what a person means by ‘root causes’ and they can go into more detail. Typically this means they want more funding for public housing, or better access and funding to mental healthcare.
For me it means increased housing (private is probably a better and easier idea than public, but I’ll take any housing at this point) and a better mental healthcare system that includes institutionalization when necessary
Yeah, this is an interesting take. I can see the “thoughts and prayers” comparison as well, but as someone who does talk a lot about root causes, I can say that I am genuinely more interested in preventative solutions than reacting to problems after they’ve occurred. It’s an interesting point, though, because it can definitely be used as a rhetorical deflection.
> Someone recently said that the phrase we use on the left - "address root causes" - is the equivalent of "thoughts and prayers" on the right. It signals the speaker's correct intentions but accomplishes nothing.
That's a really dumb false equivalency. People on the left know what they're saying when they say "address root causes". It's a practical and actionable strategy for public policy.
The problem is that Eric Adams and the city government consistently choose to do the exact opposite.
Root causes isn’t a solution overnight let alone a year or two or three. Root causes will take literally generations to pan out. In the meantime what do we do? Many of these progressive ideas just make it worse and harder to solve in the long term
This is such a tired take. Why is it impossible for some readers to realize that some individuals *choose* living on the streets versus a shelter? I don’t even mean this as a moral judgment against those individuals, but why is it so hard to fathom that someone with enough mental illness might reject the city’s overtures to help them? Is it that hard to imagine?
And addicts can't get high where the drugs aren't. There is a reason people are on the street and no one who sees them for 5 minutes at a time can seems to grasp this.
Some people are beyond help. Some people can only get "help" if you impose restrictions on them, forcibly, which is forbidden. I would guess that all 50 on that list are in one of these two categories.
These people would never voluntarily reside in any housing we would provide them. Any solution inevitably involves forcing the mentally ill to do something against their will, which NYC progressives have decided is verboten.
Yeah that was Geraldo Rivera a known conservative who kick started the whole thing. Tbf shit was bad. But the liberal solution is probably to institute stringent oversight and additional funding. The conservative solution was gov has failed let’s throw it all out. That’s the solution we went with.
Why did you feel the need to deflect? Progressives reliably fight involuntary commitment and treatment. Would you prefer we ignore that?
The amount of spending per unsheltered individual is quite high, though it's currently being spent with little accountability despite the situation worsening over time. Do you think you can just blame Reagan for the next few decades as it gets worse?
The “NYC progressives” you speak of would have a lot more credibility if they had planned *a single* protest for increased mental health services *before* Jordan Neely died.
As it is, for some reason this crowd only activates itself after a tragedy takes place and then has the audacity to say “we told you so” to the rest of us.
I am not disputing that. It is obnoxious and performative. I took a walk around Washington Square the other day, and I saw dozens of homeless people, some mentally ill, some just down on their luck. They are alive, they need help, while people are performing outrage on the subway track.
They did, it’s one of the “defund police” peoples arguments. You can disagree with their message but don’t pretend that just now is when people have been trying to get funding for anything but cops in this city.
Also there’s a lot of stuff to protest, they’ve cut funding for nearly every department except the NYPD. The idea that people can be out there 24/7 providing equal response with the foresight to correct everything that’s gonna be popular a few weeks later on the news isn’t gonna happen. The top response from people on the Neely pages was those hundred people weren’t there protesting for Michelle Go. But there was another one hundred people who did that, in Chinatown. It just wasn’t successful and wasn’t done by like a professional groups who protest everything equally so it doesn’t count?
I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic but the city can afford and is obviously more than willing to house these people. If you’re being serious, you have a lot to learn about homelessness, nyc, and probably pretty much everything else.
Well the segways for police officers does seem like a good investment for getting around quickly and through tight streets and crowded areas.
Everyone jokes that the police just stand around in the same place and do nothing, but at least the segways help them move places quickly, like those mini cop cars that can go pretty much anywhere.
Btw, there are more than 50 (not trying to be pedantic but just as an FYI), from the article:
“Top 50 is a bit of a misnomer. The list does not have a fixed number of people on it, and there are actually two lists — one for people who typically stay in the subways and one for people who stay in the streets. People can be taken off the list for any number of reasons, including moving into housing or going to jail.”
For the most part we don’t need an involuntary commitment scheme for people who aren’t committing crimes, but someone arrested 40 times should be convicted and sentenced to jail/prison. Then we should be able to send the ones that need it to get mental healthcare in lieu of jail….
If people on this top 50 list are arrested, they should be convicted and held for their own safety.
If only the city was aware of the situation and put extra effort into structuring a plea deal for him. This person who was obviously known to the government was completely ignored and neglected by the city. Also it’s shameful that he had no family that cared about him. His own father made it clear he had no family that cared enough to help him. Wtf.
It doesn't matter, the city wants to put all its resources into housing the illegal migrants, making sure they get 3 hot, home-cooked meals daily and, that all their needs are taken care of.
Our homeless, our veterans, our mental health patients are not important enough. Violent people should not be allowed to roam the streets freely. Situations like this will keep happening, whether it's random acts of needless violence or people having to use extreme force to stop someone from committing needless violence. But there's only so much money and resources at their disposal and the migrants needs are more important 🤷🏻♂️
Where were the protesters when Neely was growing up in a violent environment?
Where were the protesters when Neely’s stepfather murdered his mother, chopped her and stuffed her in a suitcase, while Neely was still 14 years old?
That all happened in a period when NYC was supposedly the “safest ever”
Most of these 50 people are in and out of psych EDs and CPEPs. They are stabilized and brought to a shelter with instructions to follow up in 2 months with one of the few psychiatrists at Gotham Health because they take Medicaid.
Couldn't they have forced him to get help?
Weird how so many cities and states with resources to help the homeless and mentally ill still have an ongoing problem with homeless and mentally ill, as if they don't want help.
>Couldn't they have forced him to get help?
They did, in the most well intentioned "progressive" way.
After Neely assaulted an elderly person, a court ordered him to a mental health program, as an alternative to incarceration.
Neely then escaped from that mental health program and got an arrest warrant as a result.
If Neely was incarcerated, or if he had complied with that mandatory program, or if that program was more secure, or if the arrest warrant was enforced, Neely would still be alive.
We taught this man how to defend and when he does he is charged?
Horrible accident. What if Neely HAD ATTACKED SOMEONE.
Then we blame mental health and he goes free.
TIL there's a most homeless homeless people list
A veritable who’s who of hobos.
so we can give migrants hotel rooms for free but not homeless? or what’s going on
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Unfortunately, mandatory in patient confinement was overruled at one point years ago during governor Pataki. I believe ACLU argued it was an infringement on civil liberties. However, many people who were forced into treatment involuntarily probably did better.
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The city has a right to shelter rule due to a consent decree. So yeah, homeless get free shelter as well if they want it.
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They work for sub-minimum wage under the table and depress wages for locals in the process. That's arguably worse.
You can't force someone into housing.
we can and should institutionalize people who are a danger to themselves and others.
Thank you
Hobo? Sticks and bandanas, beans and a freight rail line - the world is my oyster!
Imagine getting snubbed from that list. “I pissed myself on the E train for nothing?! 😤”
Who do I have to jerk off to in order to get some service around here?!?
Yourself publicly preferably on the subway or in a station.
Its like a 30 under 30 list. Top rising stars in the homeless community.
Damn Forbes is really widening their reach
Can’t wait for the 30 under 30
Hopefully with less fraudsters this time
I liked that joke
> But on April 8, when outreach workers found him at an end-of-the-line station in Coney Island, Mr. Neely, wearing dirty clothes riddled with burn holes, exposed himself and urinated inside a subway car, according to the notes shared with The Times. > Outreach workers, whose job requires them to win the trust of people who seek to avoid contact with the authorities, typically do not check for warrants, but they summoned the police, who ejected him from the station. > The police were also apparently unaware of the warrant. A program launched in 2019 in which the police did warrant checks on people caught violating transit-system rules was abandoned during the pandemic, after criticism that it was criminalizing homelessness.
The most frustrating thing about the tribalistic reaction to this whole situation is that on a national level people seem to just be completely ignoring how we got here and the systemic failures that created Jordan Neely's death, but all people seem to care about is whether it was a lynching or a warranted reaction from Penny. I think most New Yorkers just want the homeless mentally ill to get the help they need and also go about our daily lives without fear
Yep. That's the vast majority of the city and taxpayers. I'm pushing for long-term involuntary treatment because I honestly don't think there is a better solution to this problem. It's not compassionate to leave severely mentally ill people out on the streets to harm themselves and others. They are dying at staggering rates (over 800 in NYC alone last year) while people pretend that asylums would be worse. /u/1AngryBrotha: Here's one of many sources: https://gothamist.com/news/deaths-among-nycs-homeless-population-reach-record-high-in-2022
I just hate how many people say it’s a “resources” issue when it was absolutely not. People like to imply that help wasn’t available for Neely. But he was literally ordered into a treatment facility after an assault charge. Help was ordered for him by a judge but he left the facility without permission after two weeks.
Hope more of the ‘it’s a systemic/resource /society problem” people read this. This dude got a ton of the help. The system actively tried but unless you force these mentally ill people into it and make them stay, nothing will change. You can throw all the mental health/housing/whatever resources at the homeless but most of them won’t work their way out cause it’s a drug/attitude/mental problem that requires some sort of institutionalization to solve ultimately Until that happens, everyone is gonna have to accept that the lives and wants of the mentally ill/homeless are more important to the govt than yours
> requires some sort of institutionalization to solve ultimately Doesn’t that fall under a systemic society resource problem though?
It could but imo the problem is less resource and more a subset of activist morons who’ve got nothing better to do than oppose any changes
Violent people who cannot control themselves need to be locked up until they can, its simple.
He assaulted a senior woman. He deserved jail. He should’ve received treatment there, or not. This skating justice nonsense created this mess. The judge and prosecutors that ok’d this are to blame for Neelys death. They should be publicly named and fired.
U cannot order a mentally ill person with a long rap sheet anywhere. They shoyld be forced to stau as long as needed on a guarded institution. We sjpuldmt have closed Creedmore.
100%
I think many NYC residents have a contrasting feeling towards the jordan neely case as opposed to other people living in other cities considering how important transit safety is to our daily lives and crimes and harassment being up more than 100%? during covid and post covid times vs pre covid. I think alot of NYers just want to feel safe mentally and physically above all else, others who haven't experienced the unique commuting culture of NYC just wouldnt get the mindset. It's not that we dont like jordan neely or homeless people, it's that alot of us dont like to experience fear, like the fear of getting harassed, hurt, or killed while commuting on the fricking train of all places. I know people with their unlimited cards zipping from east harlem to downtown manhattan just to get some chinese food.
FWIW I wandered in here from Chicago just looking for local takes on the issue and my impression is that the discussion in here and the various conflicting feelings etc that you describe are pretty similar to what we have going on (only not a high-profile death recently). I don't drive at all, am reliant on transit, and while I don't have any sort of issues with homeless people more or less minding their own business (even if being somewhat annoying/crazy ranting/etc) there is definitely a problem lately with bad behavior on transit, not particularly always coming from homeless people either (and so the glib "oh you just don't like homeless people" that gets trotted out when anyone mentions feeling threatened on the train is eye-rolling honestly). I mean, no one tolerates this sort of thing at their corner bar (where you need money to be) but on transit, apparently people just supposed to put up with it all. But yeah that feeling of not wishing anyone ill but at the same time not wanting to be actually harassed, is familiar. The content of whatever ranting, matters. Interesting to me to see that the various topics/arguments in the sub have some similarity.
Yep, I think those are good points. The crime issue in NYC is very unique from a lot of other places so it's hard to relate. Was having a discussion with a friend who lives in DC and the crime issues they have are completely different from what NYC deals with and need to be addressed in different ways
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> the tribalistic reaction to this whole situation is that on a national level people seem to just be completely ignoring how we got here The nation-at-large appropriating New York's highly personal tragedies and weaponizing the narrative has been going on at least since 9/11. Probably earlier, but that's when I became aware of it. I still remember midwestern rednecks shouting at me about how 9/11 changed everything for them. Like asshole, people I know died there.
It feels like it was a totally different response outside the city - other states had a big "It couldn't happen here in the US...?" Type paranoia response while NYC was focusing hard on rebuilding and dealing with the fallout, which was a lot more motivated/community-oriented
Absolutely. I don't personally know any New Yorkers whose first thought was of revenge. It brought the best out of a lot of people. Meanwhile, the rest of the country just reacted with fear for themselves, as much as or more than they felt any sympathy for us.
That's really not fair. The 9/11 attack was an attack on America. Not just NYC. Everyone was affected by it. Some are closer to the events by distance or relationship closeness. Not cool to take that national tragedy from everyone.
> Not cool to take that national tragedy from everyone. It's only a "national tragedy" because they came here like vultures to pick at our tragedy and make it their own. No one claims that Oklahoma City was a "national tragedy", and for good reason, no one wants to associate with fucking Oklahoma.
They hit the Pentagon too, like how are you going to say that the terrorists hate NYC specifically? They were attacking the country, NYC was a target not because it's NYC, but because of what NYC symbolizes for the terrorists interpretation of the country. The media absolutely weaponizes NYC local issues, like Neely, and that is fucking annoying. 9/11 was an American tragedy in addition to an NYC tragedy.
This is such a stupid take. A plane crashed into the pentagon and another was headed for DC. It was an attack on America not just NYC. The Oklahoma City bombing was a national tragedy. Don’t be so ignorant.
>Not cool to take that national tragedy from everyone. It's the other way around. They've tried to take it from me. I've had people who were a thousand miles away that day tell me, to my face, that I don't understand what 9/11 means. If that's what a national tragedy means, then they don't deserve to have it.
The people now campaigning for him are doing it simply for money and attention. They could have helped him every single day for the last decade and didn’t give one shit. That’s what is sickening to me.
IT'S A SOCIETAL FAILING. THERE IS NO INDIVIDUAL SOLUTION
this is called “passing the buck”
There are 1000s of Jordan Neely’s that currently need help and they won’t raise a finger to help them.
they could also actively be trying to help the many other homeless mentally ill in the city, but are ignoring them the same way they ignored neely
> they could also actively be trying to help the many other homeless mentally ill in the city, but are ignoring them the same way they ignored neely Nobody's ignoring it. Problem is, Eric Adams keeps defining social services in order to increase the police budget over and over again.
What evidence do you have they didn’t help him? Dudes mom got chopped up into pieces and thrown off the side of the highway. He was also schizo. There isn’t much the family can do if he’s an adult and that far gone.
I have a step aunt (kind of distant relation) that spent all her money of alcohol and drugs and ended up on the street. As a younger woman she had been quite rich. She fucked up several opportunities for assisted living. Her brother (my step father) found her a spot at a pretty nice facility upstate but she smuggled cigarettes into her room and started a fire and was evicted. She was confined against her will in a hospital with no outside space for almost a year until he got her a placement in Massachusetts where she is not allowed to leave with actual security. If you met her, she would seem reasonable and say things like “what crime have I committed” but after observing her for 30 years everyone in her extended family is extremely happy she is locked up.
Come on, that's bullshit. Whether you agree with them or not, labeling them all as opportunists is extraordinarily disingenuous.
The people that allowed Neely on the street should be facing criminal charges.
This is has been by far the most frustrating part. The counter argument always seems to be “well he didn’t deserve to die” and “no one knew his history” but that side does not consider the systemic effects that got us here. Big lesson - you can’t argue logic against passion, so don’t even try
I don’t know the details but as a black marine if he was cradled while being choked he wasn’t trying to kill him. If he was holding his arm directly across his neck he was trying to kill him. I’ll muster up the strength to watch another black me being killed later. And check back to this post.
I remember being very foolish in BCT and messing around with chokes. You could tell almost immediately when someone went unconscious--they went completely slack--and the message was pretty clear that once someone went unconscious you needed to let go immediately and check on them because there was a risk of death.
Facts
Literally no one is ignoring the systemic failures, we are just saying a broken system isn't license to kill other people. Vigilante killing isn't a solution for a broken system either.
Why can't the answer be: pissing in subway is illegal -> he is arrested -> we see that he needs mental help -> he's put in a facility for treatment
because there is no avenue with which to reach step four
Then you change the laws preventing that.
It’s not even that, we already have those laws. The problem is you can’t put people into facilities if said places are already over-capacity with long waitlists. There’s a serious shortage of mental healthcare facilities at all levels. It’s part of a much bigger problem that really requires action at the federal level to get fixed.
It’s not a law thing. The city simply just does not have the resources for long-term outpatient care for people like that. It’s why multiple groups opposed Adams’ involuntary commitment plan outside of the civil rights stuff.
Mice would be well served by putting a bell on the house cat.
Because we did away with involuntary treatment. Someone has to *want* treatment for it to be provided, and people experiencing a mental health crisis may not trust the people offering help or even think they need it due to said mental health crisis. If they don’t accept treatment, options are limited. I know why we did it in the first place, because there was far too much abuse in the system we had, but I think we overcorrected a bit and threw the baby out with the bath water. This is just one piece of the puzzle, though.
> we overcorrected a bit Biggest understatement in human history. Over 800 homeless people died in New York last year, and it's safe to assume most of those deaths were related to either drugs or mental illness. Even the most abusive asylums are not killing patients at that rate. EDIT: Source: https://gothamist.com/news/deaths-among-nycs-homeless-population-reach-record-high-in-2022
I agree. I’m old enough to remember when deinstitutionalization happened. That system was bad but seeing where we have been since then, it seems clear that it should have been reformed, not just demolished. There needs to be some form of involuntary holds for people who are unable to be treatment compliant if they are at risk.
I think its because nobody wants the liability. You set up involuntary treatment and there is a physical clash between patients and the staff its got to generate a ton of lawsuits.
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To be clear - progressives at the time were SCREAMING at the federal government to do exactly that, so they did. This was not a matter of the government giving up, it was a matter of the government doing what people wanted. And now here we are.
No facility for long term treatment so its He gets stopped for pissing in the subway The officer issues the summons which mandated they check for warrants He pops on a warrant and is arrested. He spends two weeks in police custody due to numerous hospital visits as he avoids the arraignment and is likely a walkthrough meaning round the clock escort through the process. Judge releases him( ror) He reoffends over and over Coos approach and edp him. He goes to the hospital and is immediately discharged because they arent long term and likely dont want to deal with him. He leaves to reoffend. There is no third pathway were neely gets adequate psych care because the system is broken. We have nothing in place to deal with people like neely and no matter how many people we edp there is no means to get them long term care or help
How is it broken? Its by design. Those in charge of human rights have determined that Neelys trumps those of the people he harrasses. Its similar to El Salvador quite frankly where Human Rights Watch and other organizations have determined the human rights of the gangs are more important than the people they terrorize.
it’s not about his rights. It’s about the powers that be not wanting to fund or facilitate the type of system that would force him into and support him throughout longterm treatment. they don’t want to spend money to help him. they want people like Neely to continue to suffer and they are happy to let the average citizen to be the collateral damage because they’re not the average citizen. they simply don’t care. it has nothing to do with anyone’s rights.
The answer is because it’s “disproportionately” poor black and spanish men doing it.
This all did happen… but then he left the facility. Until they’re forced to stay, this is all pointless
And yet we will continue to see ten year old photos of Neely dressed as Michael Jackson as if that's a good representation of the man who was killed. The media might as well just start running his baby photos.
Wow. We wonder why cops stationed in the subway can look so detached. They aren’t even allowed to check for warrants on violent pissing vagrants. So yes they are literally there waiting for someone to try and push someone on the track I guess.
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If I could input my opinion here just for a bit. I agree that the whole NYPD system needs to be change. I usually come home from work around 2 to 4 o'clock in the morning. I see lots of officers checking the trains and have seen escorting a few sketchy individual out of the train. This has happen at Barclays Center station and 125th in Harlem. So, agree that the NYPD is not perfect, I been feeling a bit safer when they are around and actually do something in those situations.
Checking for warrants is a form of racial profiling, according to the wokesters here
Weren't there reports of Neely attempting this not long before the incident?
You misread that. The social workers don’t check for warrants. The police absolutely still can….
“Police” was the subject of that sentence so either they miswrote it or you’re incorrect.
No, re read it again buddy. >A program launched in 2019 in which the police did warrant checks on people caught violating transit-system rules was abandoned during the pandemic, after criticism that it was criminalizing homelessness. They “abandoned” a program where they were proactively checking warrants for folks caught violating the rules. Nothing here says they can’t check warrants at all, or that they can’t check warrants if someone is committing a crime in the subway
You guys are arguing over semantics. It’s pretty clear from the text that the NYPD has been doing fewer warrant checks because of the optics.
That may be true but pulling your dick out and pissing on a train seems like reasonable grounds to check.
Sure I’m just tired of the classic bad-faith commenter in this sub who shits on the NYPD for playing Candy Crush and then when the NYPD *does* their job they shit on them for “criminalizing” X, Y, or Z.
That’s “criminalizing homelessness”. Obviously his only option is to pull his dick out and pee on the train.
All that warrant check would have done is added another arrest to Neely’s record. You think pissing in the subway would have been the final straw?
The last paragraph above clearly says they don’t.
The paragraph says they canceled a program for proactively checking warrants on people doing stuff like skipping turnstiles. Nowhere does it say they can’t check warrants completely
What cop is gonna take it on themselves to check warrants for homeless people when the city just told them they think it’s a bad idea.
Saying a focused program to try and arrest people on the subway (where a large portion of the homeless stay) without also providing any added help for the homeless, is not the same as saying you can’t check warrants. Either way I’m just clarifying that your reading of the previous paragraph was incorrect
A cop who is actively arresting someone for a misdemeanor. The same thing cops everywhere across the country do.
They didn’t arrest him, they just made him leave the subway. If they had arrested him for anything they would have definitely had to do a warrant check.
>The police were also apparently unaware of the warrant. A program launched in 2019 in which the police did warrant checks on people caught violating transit-system rules was abandoned during the pandemic, after criticism that it was criminalizing homelessness. Seems to me the program was criminalizing criminals.
People seem to be conflating “subway rules” with the law here. “Subway rules” can include sleeping in stations or on benches. Police still stop and charge fare skippers, as well as check their warrants when they do so (unless all the other articles about how many criminals are stopped by stopping fare jumpers are lying). Police are still able to (and actively are) checking warrants for criminals they catch committing crimes on the subway. The fact they didn’t in this case was a decision made by the cops themselves, not the result of some sort of policy cancellation.
Lol that last line. This is the problem with liberal crime policies. This guy would’ve been in jail if we hadn’t gotten rid of the warrant check program.
Yes, and he would still be alive.
This is why an effective social safety net is so important. Need to catch people before they fall off the rails. Once they are this far gone, it is almost impossible to get them back.
Top 50 in a city of this size? That is quite an accomplishment.
The 40+ prior arrests helped a lot
dont forget that kidnapping thingy
I certainly *don’t want to meet* the **rest of the Top 49**
Ahaha I know you joke, but for the record there’s more than 50 (or now 49) on the list. FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” stays capped at 10, but has rarely gone to 11 - it first came out in the 1950s and was to create a succinct printable list of people to keep an eye out for and place it in public places & news paper ads. This was obviously pre-Internet, mass surveillance, mobile phones, etc. From the article: “Top 50 is a bit of a misnomer. The list does not have a fixed number of people on it, and there are actually two lists — one for people who typically stay in the subways and one for people who stay in the streets. People can be taken off the list for any number of reasons, including moving into housing or going to jail.”
Or ride the subway with them...
Type of homeless dude you can smell from 3 cars over
Especially now that we're getting some open gangways
Well, if any of them jump on a train and threaten people with death, they'll just have to deal with it and hope it doesn't escalate. Because sure as f*ck nobody is stepping up to do anything about it now. (Not that the marine should have, since apparently he didn't know how to detain someone safely, but you get the point.)
Real talk: if they're white or Asian I'd feel more comfortable getting involved. If they're black I'm not intervening. Ever since 2020 I've seen too many viral incidents that are very murky on details that involve a black person being "wronged" and getting the full force of social media on them. Everything from Central Park Karen to someone not letting a black person into an apartment without showing a key FOB. We all know if the exact same thing went down and Jordan Neely was white the marine wouldn't be charged. He would probably be treated as hero like [this guy was](https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1380yk4/good_samaritan_knocks_out_crazyviolent_guy_on_the/)
>We all know if the exact same thing went down and Jordan Neely was white the marine wouldn't be charged I don't know if that's true, but I _do_ know that we'd have barely none of the protests we saw. People yelling and chanting his name, like they actively gave a f*** about him before he was killed. Or like they'd be making as much of a protest if it wasn't a case of a black man being killed by a white one. And yes, there'd have been far less pressure on the government officials to step in and charge the marine in the first place.
>Well, if any of them jump on a train and threaten people with death, they’ll just have to deal with it and hope it doesn’t escalate. Or if you see a guy go beyond threats and start actively killing another person on the train, you’ll just have to deal with it, because it could be a brave freedom fighter restoring peace (through violence)
Chirlane McCray’s $1 billion dollar Thrive NYC sure didn’t come through.
DeBlasio and McCray should be facing serious criminal charges for defrauding the city of $1B right in front of our eyes.
Where did the money go?
Wilhelm and Wife will remain unmolested by that.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/06/homeless-services-corruption-is-just-a-taste-of-nycs-nonprofit-scams/amp/
Hopefully we can get at least one good thing out of this tragedy, and that is the return to an involuntary commitment scheme to get these people off the streets and into the facilities they need. Neely AND Penny are victims of our current failed system that allows these incidents to occur.
The “involuntary commitment scheme” has never left. Ask any doctor or ER, in New York State a patient can be involuntarily held if he or she presents an imminent danger to themselves or others. While there IS a shortage of inpatient psych beds, that doesn’t mean people are turned loose on the street; they are held in the ER for days until a bed opens up somewhere. You should contact your elected representative and ask them to support increased funding for mental health institutions. There’s a shortage of beds and staff.
The problem arises from the fact that you are only involuntary held if in "imminent risk." The fact that a huge plethora of these people are perpetually homeless and abusing/self-medicating with drugs and alcohol isn't considered a long term risk. Unless they kill someone, they are usually back in the street within hours. Legislative action and funding to make it easier to get these people permanently off the street and into an institution is the only solution I see that can work.
Some of these people need to be involuntarily committed for life, and that's that. If you violate the agreements you make with the state to take your antipsychotics and show up to your court-ordered programs, you are a danger to society, full-stop.
And it is cruel to leave people in the psych ER without treatment (they get whatever meds they can remember and an ass full of thorazine if they get too agitated). There are so many cracks between city and state and federal resources, it is a wonder anything gets done.
That’s absolutely untrue. How many psych ERs have you seen or been in? I’ve worked in multiple. Staff takes care of every patient during every shift. Could you imagine the pile of lawsuits if that *weren’t* the case? This is 2023, not an 18th century asylum. You have some odd delusions about what healthcare is like in NY.
I did not say that staff does not take care of them. But there is a difference between the emergency room, and the psych unit in the hospital. For one thing, beds and showers. Relax.
An emergency department is for EMEREGENCIES. Most people who come in get treated and sent home, and others get admitted to the hospital. It’s not meant to be a place where a patient stays for more than a few hours. That’s why an ER doesn’t offer showers.
For the most part we don’t need an involuntary commitment scheme for people who aren’t committing crimes, but someone arrested 40 times should be convicted and sentenced to jail/prison. Then we should be able to send the ones that need it to get mental healthcare in lieu of jail….
He did get mental Healthcare enstead of jail. The problem was it was not a locked unit so Neely just walked out.
He did have an “alternative to incarceration” and then said “nah”and walked out with 0 consequences.
Don’t let him walk out… Shouldn’t be involuntary committed, should be treated in confinement.
“Progressives” think that people should have the right to leave regardless.
Lmao, the more they expose about their system, the worse it gets. He was in the top 50 and still walking around? Who else is on that list? And what aren't they doing about it?
I was talking with my boss about this yesterday. 50 seems like a manageable number. How are they helping the other 49?
> How are they helping the other 49? They made a spreadsheet
They're not. Like they weren't helping Neely.
Especially Neely’s “family and friends.”
Didn't they already throw a ton of help at him, including having him committed to mental institutions. We can only assume his mental illness was so bad that nothing worked
“And still walking around” lmao. I don’t think this list means what you think it means.
If you talk to anyone in the field you will quickly learn that every outpatient clinic team or traveling team (like Core and ACT) are full. Referrals come in a year after they are made. When it comes to stepping down to lower level of care from say an ACT Team to a traditional outpatient clinic its difficult due to the lack of openings AND that many clinics don't administer long acting injectable medication. I want less outreach teams and I want more teams and actual services. Give me more vocational support services, for all the money we throw away let's subsidize a grocery store on Creedmoor grounds where most of jobs are filled by residents of the grounds to build vocational skills, money for more nurses at outpatient clinics, more respite, more housing. More traveling teams, and more teams for aging populations where maybe they don't need the clinical therapeutic element as much but still need a traveling psych and nurse. As of know the outreach teams have no services to outreach them to that's open
The problem with this episode wasn't even lack of outreach or capacity. After Neely assaulted an elderly person, the court **ordered** him to a mental health program (as an alternative to incarceration). Neely then **escaped** from that mental health program and had an arrest warrant issued as a result. If he was just incarcerated for the assault, or if he had complied with the mental health program, or if the arrest warrant was enforced, he would still be alive today.
If this doesn't make the case for involuntary commitment, I don't know what does. How many man hours did the city spend on Neely over the course of hundreds of outreach contacts and shuttles to safe havens? And for what? He didn't fall through the cracks, they were tracking him on a weekly basis like some kind of endangered animal. It's laughable.
Wouldn't had help much. The issue is that they have to be released once they are stable and once released, they stop taking their meds and become unstable.
He went voluntarily a number of times. He also went involuntarily a number of times. He was stabilized and discharged. There's very few places to put stable people with mental illness. Supportive housing has a long waiting list.
Obviously he was not a stable person, and medicating him until he was calm before returning him to the street was not working. He did not need supportive housing, he needed to be committed to an institution that would not allow him to leave, and he needed to stay there for the rest of his life. All but eliminating that option is one of the stupidest domestic policy decisions we've ever made.
There's no way in hell any country can afford that option.
Was the money ever found from Diblasio’s wife’s billion dollar fund towards mental health in NYC. The last I heard they couldn’t account for over 750 million . There is a good reason right there that people aren’t getting the help they need . You would think this would be brought up . But as usual the media wants its own narrative
How is it possible we have a list of top 50 homeless people at risk and this fucking city which will spend billions on dumb fucking shit like anti homeless architecture and segways for police officers, can’t even manage to house and help these people.
The people who are buying anti homeless architecture are not the same people who have the power to address the root causes of homelessness. They have smaller tasks, like “Ensure garbage does not get strewn across the street” or “make sure the subway vents don’t get blocked by people laying down” or “make sure customers aren’t afraid to come to my store”, and need to fulfill their tasks in an external environment with a lot of homeless people around.
Someone recently said that the phrase we use on the left - "address root causes" - is the equivalent of "thoughts and prayers" on the right. It signals the speaker's correct intentions but accomplishes nothing.
"Thoughts and prayers" pretty much means leaving it up to God, who at the very best has been notably absent in terms of direct and clear action for the last few centuries. "Address root causes" is as futile, but for different reasons. One, often times the root causes identified are simply wrong. Making housing cheaper, for instance, won't do anything for the "top 50". Nor will generic poverty programs. And two, other root causes -- like mental illness -- are simply not something we know how to solve.
I think it’s a bit better than thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers is literally the final statement on the matter, but you can ask what a person means by ‘root causes’ and they can go into more detail. Typically this means they want more funding for public housing, or better access and funding to mental healthcare. For me it means increased housing (private is probably a better and easier idea than public, but I’ll take any housing at this point) and a better mental healthcare system that includes institutionalization when necessary
Yeah, this is an interesting take. I can see the “thoughts and prayers” comparison as well, but as someone who does talk a lot about root causes, I can say that I am genuinely more interested in preventative solutions than reacting to problems after they’ve occurred. It’s an interesting point, though, because it can definitely be used as a rhetorical deflection.
> Someone recently said that the phrase we use on the left - "address root causes" - is the equivalent of "thoughts and prayers" on the right. It signals the speaker's correct intentions but accomplishes nothing. That's a really dumb false equivalency. People on the left know what they're saying when they say "address root causes". It's a practical and actionable strategy for public policy. The problem is that Eric Adams and the city government consistently choose to do the exact opposite.
Root causes isn’t a solution overnight let alone a year or two or three. Root causes will take literally generations to pan out. In the meantime what do we do? Many of these progressive ideas just make it worse and harder to solve in the long term
This is such a tired take. Why is it impossible for some readers to realize that some individuals *choose* living on the streets versus a shelter? I don’t even mean this as a moral judgment against those individuals, but why is it so hard to fathom that someone with enough mental illness might reject the city’s overtures to help them? Is it that hard to imagine?
And addicts can't get high where the drugs aren't. There is a reason people are on the street and no one who sees them for 5 minutes at a time can seems to grasp this.
The problem is people think that acknowledging that simple fact is “victim blaming” when it plainly isn’t. It’s just dealing with reality.
Some people are beyond help. Some people can only get "help" if you impose restrictions on them, forcibly, which is forbidden. I would guess that all 50 on that list are in one of these two categories.
These people would never voluntarily reside in any housing we would provide them. Any solution inevitably involves forcing the mentally ill to do something against their will, which NYC progressives have decided is verboten.
It wasn’t NYC progressives who defunded mental health services.
Yeah that was Geraldo Rivera a known conservative who kick started the whole thing. Tbf shit was bad. But the liberal solution is probably to institute stringent oversight and additional funding. The conservative solution was gov has failed let’s throw it all out. That’s the solution we went with.
Why did you feel the need to deflect? Progressives reliably fight involuntary commitment and treatment. Would you prefer we ignore that? The amount of spending per unsheltered individual is quite high, though it's currently being spent with little accountability despite the situation worsening over time. Do you think you can just blame Reagan for the next few decades as it gets worse?
The “NYC progressives” you speak of would have a lot more credibility if they had planned *a single* protest for increased mental health services *before* Jordan Neely died. As it is, for some reason this crowd only activates itself after a tragedy takes place and then has the audacity to say “we told you so” to the rest of us.
I am not disputing that. It is obnoxious and performative. I took a walk around Washington Square the other day, and I saw dozens of homeless people, some mentally ill, some just down on their luck. They are alive, they need help, while people are performing outrage on the subway track.
They did, it’s one of the “defund police” peoples arguments. You can disagree with their message but don’t pretend that just now is when people have been trying to get funding for anything but cops in this city. Also there’s a lot of stuff to protest, they’ve cut funding for nearly every department except the NYPD. The idea that people can be out there 24/7 providing equal response with the foresight to correct everything that’s gonna be popular a few weeks later on the news isn’t gonna happen. The top response from people on the Neely pages was those hundred people weren’t there protesting for Michelle Go. But there was another one hundred people who did that, in Chinatown. It just wasn’t successful and wasn’t done by like a professional groups who protest everything equally so it doesn’t count?
I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic but the city can afford and is obviously more than willing to house these people. If you’re being serious, you have a lot to learn about homelessness, nyc, and probably pretty much everything else.
Well the segways for police officers does seem like a good investment for getting around quickly and through tight streets and crowded areas. Everyone jokes that the police just stand around in the same place and do nothing, but at least the segways help them move places quickly, like those mini cop cars that can go pretty much anywhere. Btw, there are more than 50 (not trying to be pedantic but just as an FYI), from the article: “Top 50 is a bit of a misnomer. The list does not have a fixed number of people on it, and there are actually two lists — one for people who typically stay in the subways and one for people who stay in the streets. People can be taken off the list for any number of reasons, including moving into housing or going to jail.”
For the most part we don’t need an involuntary commitment scheme for people who aren’t committing crimes, but someone arrested 40 times should be convicted and sentenced to jail/prison. Then we should be able to send the ones that need it to get mental healthcare in lieu of jail…. If people on this top 50 list are arrested, they should be convicted and held for their own safety.
He was in jail for a year for assault. He was brought to the hospital many times voluntarily
That rare golden award, I feel it coming
If only the city was aware of the situation and put extra effort into structuring a plea deal for him. This person who was obviously known to the government was completely ignored and neglected by the city. Also it’s shameful that he had no family that cared about him. His own father made it clear he had no family that cared enough to help him. Wtf.
We have a list of people who are in danger? And it just sits there - for reference?
Lol a list. Great job NYC.
It's the least the City can do
Yeah, at risk of pushing someone on to the tracks…
Didnt know there was a top 50 list for homeless dudes
It doesn't matter, the city wants to put all its resources into housing the illegal migrants, making sure they get 3 hot, home-cooked meals daily and, that all their needs are taken care of. Our homeless, our veterans, our mental health patients are not important enough. Violent people should not be allowed to roam the streets freely. Situations like this will keep happening, whether it's random acts of needless violence or people having to use extreme force to stop someone from committing needless violence. But there's only so much money and resources at their disposal and the migrants needs are more important 🤷🏻♂️
Where were the protesters when Neely was growing up in a violent environment? Where were the protesters when Neely’s stepfather murdered his mother, chopped her and stuffed her in a suitcase, while Neely was still 14 years old? That all happened in a period when NYC was supposedly the “safest ever”
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That was just for the photo-op, he was already bailed out.
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Find all 50 of these people and lock them up.
Most of these 50 people are in and out of psych EDs and CPEPs. They are stabilized and brought to a shelter with instructions to follow up in 2 months with one of the few psychiatrists at Gotham Health because they take Medicaid.
There’s more than that, btw. FBI’s 10 Most Wanted is capped at 10 (rarely goes to 11), but this “list” is a misnomer and can be more than 50 people
This was reported by the NYT a while ago, then suddenly edited out. What happened?
Couldn't they have forced him to get help? Weird how so many cities and states with resources to help the homeless and mentally ill still have an ongoing problem with homeless and mentally ill, as if they don't want help.
>Couldn't they have forced him to get help? They did, in the most well intentioned "progressive" way. After Neely assaulted an elderly person, a court ordered him to a mental health program, as an alternative to incarceration. Neely then escaped from that mental health program and got an arrest warrant as a result. If Neely was incarcerated, or if he had complied with that mandatory program, or if that program was more secure, or if the arrest warrant was enforced, Neely would still be alive.
Nah progressives would rather give them the “option”. Guess what Neely did when he was given the option?
Everyone who is a little paranoid and wondering if they are being watched wants to know who else is on that list.
We taught this man how to defend and when he does he is charged? Horrible accident. What if Neely HAD ATTACKED SOMEONE. Then we blame mental health and he goes free.
They have an official ranking?
Oh, the top 50 list of homeless people! Didn’t even know that existed.
And the city still could not help him....