🇺🇸 End of the line for civil courage?

24-year-old former Marine, Daniel Penny, intervened on the subway against a violent passenger. The trial against Penny calls into question the role of civil courage in US society.

NEW YORK. Entering the NYC subway is akin to entering a lottery. Ride experiences differ depending on who you end up traveling with. Sometimes it’s teenage talents performing street dance routines, sometimes it’s blank commuter faces, sometimes tourists, and sometimes socially odd or marginalized characters.

It’s not uncommon for fellow passengers to be among the city’s homeless population (130,000 stay in shelters, and approximately 4,000 live without a proper roof over their heads). Many of them suffer from mental health conditions, such as schizophrenia and severe depressive or bipolar disorders.

Jordan Neely, a young black man, was part of this group. Trauma followed him throughout his 30 years of life. When he was 14, his mother was murdered by his stepfather. He developed PTSD and struggled with schizophrenia and autism, torn between his dreams and the limitations of his illness.

Jordan Neely often performed as Michael Jackson near Times Square. In 2021, he was hospitalized for mental issues. Neither was Neely a stranger to the legal system. He had been arrested 42 times before May 1, 2023, when he boarded the northbound F train.

Facing his fellow passengers, Neely declared he was having a bad day and that it didn’t matter if he would end up in prison for life. “I don’t give a damn. I will kill a motherfucker. I’m ready to die,” he shouted, witnesses later reported. His behavior left several of them fearing for their lives.

Anyone who lives in New York City and uses its public transit have their own stories to tell. I vividly remember the man smoking crack inside the subway car while pounding his fists against the windows. And the woman screaming at a horrified family staring at the subway floor. A close friend recently told me how a man during her train commute had brandished a knife in broad daylight. Another friend was hit, unprovoked, by a woman during morning rush hours.

For a long time, however, I had a sense that New Yorkers would be able to resolve such unpleasant encounters. There is a strong “we’re in it together” mentality in the city—a quiet, communal culture reinforced after the September 11 attacks, eight years before I first moved to New York, that persisted long after.

Civil courage — the responsibility to intervene and protect fellow citizens in dangerous situations — seemed to permeate the city air. A quiet assurance that aggressive behavior from a passenger would be met with a calming presence from another. A simple “Hey man, cool down”, or similar.

In 2020 that feeling began to fade.

George Floyd’s death ignited the largest social justice movement in half a century.

Not just police violence, but general societal inequalities were absorbed into the interpretive framework of white oppression of black people.

This movement raised important questions about racism, but also fostered paranoia and despair.

At times, I observed New York police officers (who, incidentally, include a slightly higher proportion of Black (16.51 percentage) and Latino (32.47 percentage) individuals than the City’s overall demographics) avoid intervening in incidents that in the past would have warranted action. I saw people act aggressively toward others while police stood silently by, and residents hurl insults at officers whose only offense was wearing the uniform.

Reluctance to act or intervene was not unique for New York City. In Chicago during the fall of 2022, I met a female police officer who told me she could no longer do her job. She described how police management had turned their backs on her and her colleagues. Instead of supporting the rank-and-file effort of patrolling the streets, management prioritized finding faults within. Supervisors actively reached out to people in criminal circles to solicit feedback on police conduct, informing them on how to file complaints. The female police officer had herself refrained from intervening, even avoided saving lives, out of fear for lawsuits should some aspect in her conduct been deemed flawed. The mental toll on her and colleagues had been heavy that summer, with three coworkers taking their own lives.

Around this time it became fashionable to label oneself as a "white ally" and call for defunding the police. Non-white residents in vulnerable neighborhoods often expressed the opposite sentiment, however, asking for more police presence.

To question the defunding of the police-demand was unpopular, since it complicated the narrative around where the problems lay.

It was during this time that I stopped taking people’s civil courage for granted. Not because I believed the willingness to intervene had abated, but because the cost of doing so might turn out to be too high should the circumstances turn out to be wrong.

Former Marine Daniel Penny, then 24, defied the zeitgeist when he stepped in to confront Jordan Neely on May 1, 2023.

Neely boarded the subway car and, according to multiple witnesses, threatened to kill its passengers.

A mother hid with her child behind a stroller, later recounting she had feared for both their lives. A high school student said she was on the verge of fainting from fear. Another woman described being terrified. A male freelance journalist said Neely was behaving threateningly but didn’t physically attack anyone.

According to his own account, Daniel Penny acted to neutralize Neely and protect the frightened passengers. He placed Neely in a chokehold — a restraint technique used to subdue physical resistance that, if prolonged, can be life threatening.

Neely tried to break free while Penny maintained the hold, assisted by other passengers. As they restrained Neely together, someone is said to have shouted, "You’re going to kill him now." At one point, Neely’s body went limp, but Penny continued the hold for 51 more seconds. The Free Press has published a video showing multiple testimonies and parts of the incident:

WATCH: What Really Happened Between Daniel Penny and Jordan Neely

Police arriving on the scene reported that Neely still had a pulse.

A short while later, at the hospital, he was declared dead.

Daniel Penny was unaware that Neely had died while being interrogated at the police station that day. Penny explained how he learned to use the chokehold technique during his time in the Marines, and that he had intervened against Neely because there were women and children on the subway. A few hours later, he was released without charges.

Another passenger spoke with police on the scene and described how Neely had said, “I don’t care if I die. I’ll do anything. I’m going to jail. I don’t care,” and acted “unbelievably off the chart.” She also described how Daniel Penny “tackled him” and “took a chokehold—not a hard chokehold, just enough to secure him.”

The media narrative, however, would take a different turn.

Jordan Neely was black; Daniel Penny was white.

The incident was framed within the broader narrative of white violence against black individuals.

“Jordan Neely was murdered,” wrote Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on X. Her fellow party member Jamaal Bowman described the incident as yet another case where a Black man was “publicly executed.” A headline in New York Times Opinion read: “Making people uncomfortable can now get you killed.” On MSNBC, host Joy Reid said, “The one person who was in danger, obviously, was Jordan Neely.”

On May 3, two days after the incident, Manhattan’s progressive district attorney Alvin Bragg announced that an investigation had been launched. The same day, the medical examiner stated that the cause of death was homicide and that Neely died from the chokehold.

Penny turned himself in nine days later after Bragg’s office brought charges of manslaughter, a crime that could carry up to fifteen years in prison.

The indictment divides Americans. Some see Penny as a racially motivated murderer, while others view him as a hero facing a politically motivated prosecution.

During the ongoing trial in New York, medical examiner Cynthia Harris admitted she had determined the chokehold as the cause of death before having seen the autopsy report. She also stated that her assessment about the cause of Neely’s death would not have changed even if it turned out that he had “enough fentanyl in his system to put down an elephant.”

Neely died with the street drug K2 in his body. The defense has argued that the drug, combined with other factors, contributed to Neely's death. Forensic pathologist Satish Chundru described, in addition, how schizophrenia increases the risk of sudden cardiac death. Neely also suffered from sickle cell disease, a hereditary condition that affects the body’s hemoglobin, which transports oxygen. According to the autopsy, Neely showed signs of this condition at the time of his death.

When asked directly whether Neely died from the chokehold, Dr. Chundru said no. Instead, he stated that Neely died from “a combination of sickle cell crisis, the schizophrenia, the struggle and restraint, and synthetic marijuana.”

If Penny is convicted, he risks being imprisoned until he turns 40. If acquitted, a progressive outburst is likely to take place.

Meanwhile, during the trial, a report on DEI initiatives (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) creating a hostile bias was released. According to a study from Rutgers University and the Network Contagion Research Institute, DEI can “heighten racial suspicion, prejudicial attitudes, authoritarian policing, and support for punitive behaviors in the absence of evidence for a transgression deserving punishment”.

(The report was rejected by The New York Times. Sources with insight into the case speculate the newspaper, whose slogan is “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” wanted to avoid turmoil among its staff.)

The subway car Jordan Neely was riding in was a microcosm of New York. It carried passengers from various ethnic backgrounds. People who said they feared for their lives. Who later defended the young Marine retiree’s actions

Neely's fate is undoubtedly tragic. His lot in life worse than most Americans’. His situation was a problem not only for himself but for American society as a whole. Did this make Neely a victim when he boarded the subway to threaten the life of fellow passengers? Should Daniel Penny have refrained from trying to protect them?

Daniel Penny’s fate is tied to this larger question about civil courage, and what kind of society the U.S. wants to be.

One where people dare to speak out when they or others are threatened? Or one where they refrain out of fear that — if the circumstances aren’t right — they will be vilified or even prosecuted?

This prosecution sends a signal to the American public. An acquittal may not be enough to encourage people to intervene physically in violent or threatening situations. But if Penny is convicted, civil courage as we have come to know it may have reached the end of the line.