A Free Penny

New Yorkers have had enough

Submitted by a NYC reader

“There is no way they will convict him.” I said that the moment charges were filed. Didn’t need a vibe shift. This was not about Trump, and as strongly as I knew Trump would be convicted, I felt Daniel Penny would not be convicted. Bernie Goetz was 40 years ago and was much worse. The city was worse but it was a sign. This case is a sign, too.

At the exact same time as the Penny-Neely incident, another New Yorker named Jordin Williams stabbed and killed a loon on the trains. Grand Jury wouldn’t even indict. Jordin had a bit of non-white privilege, because Penny, tall and handsome, was a perfect Great White Defendant. I’m not making this racial; the prosecutor Dafna Yoran made it racial. During the trial, she did not call the defendant Mr. Penny but “the white man”. This was all the prosecution had. It was a bang-bang quick decision situation, where Penny made a split second decision with a train car full of thankful people. The entire system tried to clean up Neely’s face. A career criminal with mental issues was an unhoused Michael Jackson impersonator. Sorry, we’ve all seen who he was as we deal with psychotic criminals daily in the city now. They were running a racial reckoning kangaroo court. Penny was a living, breathing scapegoat. Neely was the latest angelic, gentle street urchin.

Why did I feel so strongly about no conviction? I did not say acquittal, just no conviction. Then a negotiation on if they’d retry or not. I expected at least one person on that jury to have a bad experience on a train in the last eighteen months. Someone went through what that train car of grateful passengers went through. Maybe they had to do that trick where you curl your kid around the back of your legs to protect them. They wish someone had done something like Penny did for them. This was an accident, which with more evidence and testimony looks like an entire breakdown in the city system. People are sick of it.

We have resources for Neelys, but Neely abandoned the shelter. We could lock Neelys up for one of their dozens of crimes, but Dafna Yorans let them out. We have some of the best compensated cops in America, but they didn’t bother to try to resuscitate Neely. That’s your job. These municipal elements all have responsibilities they shirked and wanted Penny to take the fall. They ask all of us to do the same daily. There is always an element of crazy or danger out on the streets, but Giuliani and Bratton made them safer and Bloomberg followed through. We may have to live with a little spice but don’t have to live as humble peasants cowering before recently elevated nobles made up of the worst elements in the world.

Penny was not Trump. He was just a guy living in the city. He was a Marine. That still has some cache. It was a Manhattan jury, but the defendant was pretty clean. Not just clean, but a hero. He didn’t have to act because Neely wasn’t threatening him, but he threatened others on the train. He threatened a mother with a kid in a stroller. The prosecution asked a jury to make a villain out of a hero. When the jury came back hung, and Yoran tried to weasel her way to some conviction, I wasn’t shocked they took a day to say not guilty. They were telling her to GFY. You lost. Admit it. Go home to your wife, Dafna. She should also wait for the emails in January from the Department of Justice asking for records and emails in their investigation into denying Mr. Penny his civil and constitutional rights.

Are we going to get a Republican mayor? No way. Giuliani ran in ‘89, a full five years after Bernie Geotz’s fateful train ride, and lost a close one. It took a dismal Dinkins term and more crime and craziness for Giuliani to squeak through. Trump did cause a shift in the city, but that’s Trump. We’d need another Mr. Moneybags Bloomberg type but as an Independent and solely focused on law and order. Give the tastemakers their pet lib social and cultural shit, but make it clean and neat for the rest of us. If they promise to investigate and charge De Blasio’s wife for the missing $850 million, I’ll campaign for him myself.