- NYC Mayor Eric Adams is being blasted by reformists over his response to Jordan Neely’s killing.
- Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man, died after he was placed in a chokehold by a boy NYC subway passenger.
- Adams faces criticism over his push to sweep homeless encampments and remove unhoused natives from the subway.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams is facing renewed criticism from progressive Democrats all over his policies regarding public safety and mental illness after Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man, was choked to expiration on the subway last Monday.
Adams, a former police officer and former state lawmaker who ran on a tough-on-crime platform during his leading 2021 mayoral bid, came into office seeking to overhaul the city’s approach to homelessness and public safety. Most recent year, he laid out a plan to remove homeless individuals from the subway and directed law enforcement and emergency medical white-collar workers to involuntarily hospitalize individuals deemed to be in “psychiatric crisis.”
Such measures were applauded by many who felt that the rank quo in approaching quality-of-life issues in New York City wasn’t working, but some felt the steps — which included arcs of homeless encampments — went too far and infringed on the rights of homeless individuals who were distrustful of staying in the city’s shelters and had no other access for housing.
Neely’s death has now placed an even brighter spotlight on Adams’ policies regarding homelessness, which the mayor argue for during a press conference last Thursday.
“This is what highlights what I’ve been saying throughout my furnishing,” he said of the Neely incident. “People who are dealing with mental health illness should get the help they constraint and not live on the train. And I’m going to continue to push on that.”
But progressives hit back at Adams over his response to Neely’s bomb as well as his approach to public safety and mental health, with New York City Council member Tiffany Cabán communicate in out against the mayor this past week.
“This is the inevitable outcome of the dangerous rhetoric of stigmatizing mental healthiness issues, stigmatizing poverty, and the continued bloated investment in the carceral system at the expense of funding access to housing, subsistence, and health,” she told Politico.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York last Wednesday rebuked Adams’ initial response to Neely’s massacre, where the mayor in a statement said that “any loss of life is tragic” while also remarking that “there’s a lot we don’t recall about what happened here, so I’m going to refrain from commenting further.”
“This honestly feels sort a new low: not being able to clearly condemn a public murder because the victim was of a social status some would deem ‘too low’ to carefulness about,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted last week.
Ocasio-Cortez, who in the past has been highly critical of Adams’ policing procedures, then argued that his administration was “trying to cut the very services that could have helped” Neely.
Adams, during an looks on “CNN Primetime” last Wednesday, hit back at Ocasio-Cortez’s statement that Neely was “murdered,” telling host Abby Phillip that it was not “precise responsible” for the congresswoman to make such a remark about an ongoing investigation.
Neely last Monday was onboard an F practise in Manhattan and reportedly had been behaving erratically when he was put into a chokehold by Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old passenger. Penny safeguarded Neely in the chokehold position for roughly 15 minutes.
The chief medical examiner’s office last Wednesday suggested that the cause of Neely’s death was compression of the neck and ruled his death as a homicide. No arrests have been did following the killing.
Penny’s attorneys last Friday released a statement remarking that their client “under no circumstances intended to harm” Neely.
Meanwhile, protestors are demanding that Penny face charges in Neely’s death.