On December 22, 1984, a man name Bernie Getz shot four black teenagers on a subway train in New York City. The group — who by their own admission were on their way to rob an arcade — sat down near Getz and one of them said to him, “Give me $5,” whereupon Getz pulled out a Smith and Wesson .38 pistol and fired five shots. He wounded all four of the teens, paralyzing one of them by severing his spine. Getz claimed self-defense and was acquitted of attempted murder and first-degree assault, but was sentenced of one year in jail for illegal possession of a weapon. He became a polarizing media figure, hailed as a hero by some and a monster by others, who saw the incident in a vacuum as a gross overreaction at best and a racist hit job at worst.
But of course the incident didn’t take place in a vacuum. In the early 1980s, New York City was mired in a crime wave that made taking the subway or walking the streets at night into dangerous propositions. Muggings and random assaults were routine, and a highly disproportionate amount them were committed by the city’s black minority. Getz may have had an itchy trigger finger, but his paranoia was completely warranted by the context of the time. Many who lauded him saw a beleaguered everyman finally taking a stand against urban decay, since the authorities had clearly lost control of crime. Getz himself certainly felt that way about it.
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Details are still emerging from a new incident in New York City, but it seems quite similar to the Getz shooting. A homeless black man named Jordan Neely was antagonizing riders on a subway car, and a white former Marine wrestled him to the ground and put him in a choke hold. Unlike the Getz incident, this was caught on video, though the video begins after both men were on the floor. Apparently Neely had entered the car and said, “I don’t care if I die. I don’t care if I go to jail. I don’t have any food. I’m done.” He then took off his coat and threw it on the floor, and said he was ready to go to jail and get a life sentence. The other passengers moved away, except for the Marine, who moved up quietly behind Neely and brought him to the ground, where he held him with the help of another passenger until Neely died of asphyxiation.
Not much is yet known about the Marine who killed Neely. He appears too young to be a combat veteran, but even if he’s only gone through training, he’s an individual primed for violent assertive action when confronted with a threat. My dad was a Vietnam Marine, and he explained to me that he spent two years as a long-haul trucker when he returned home because he knew he was a loaded weapon, primed to respond lethally to some random provocation and get himself in trouble. As a combat soldier, his instincts were wired to anticipate and neutralize. Similarly, this subway Marine wasn’t going to wait until Neely actually attacked the other passengers. Neely’s behavior had marked him as a threat, and so he was neutralized. The death may have been unintended, but it falls into the “acceptable risk” category in a soldier’s decision matrix. This stands in contrast to a man who just sat there with his wife and infant during another recent videotaped New York subway incident while a black man racially berated and threatened his child. That man probably knew the rules better than the Marine. He knew that the provocation had de facto regime approval, and so retaliation was unauthorized and dangerous on multiple levels.
For his part, Neely seems like a somewhat tragic figure. His mother was murdered by her boyfriend some years back, and he appears to have been a more pleasant presence before his mental state drifted off the cliff’s edge (he’s racked up over 40 arrests). The preferred photo of him in the media has been of him impersonating Michael Jackson during a subway performance years ago — much like Trayvon Martin with his birthday cake and Michael Brown in his graduation gown. But like those other two cases, this doesn’t represent what those commuters were dealing with on that subway train. And like the Getz case in the 1980s, it it doesn’t take into account the greater context of what people in New York and dozens of other American cities have been dealing with when it comes to homelessness and black crime. Subway attacks of various sorts have become a pretty regular occurrence in New York. When I was there last year, a rash of people being pushed to their deaths on the train tracks had passengers standing far back from the yellow lines in the subway stations. Signs telling people ways to avoid danger were plastered in clusters on walls around the underground. The atmosphere was tense.
The incident itself will come into clearer focus over time, but the bifurcated reaction to it is something we can look at with clear eyes right now. Though typical in its seeming lack of empathy, the Right’s reaction in favor of the Marine’s actions is a healthy response to increasingly intolerable conditions in the cities, where filth and crime and general decline have fallen under the feminized regime’s “tolerance” umbrella. The Left’s reaction of course keys in on the racial dynamic, but it has blossomed outward to illustrate a strongly felt belief that Americans — especially white Americans — are just supposed to deal with the rot. That they must accept the behavior of the regime’s client populations with a straight face and be thankful for the privilege. The relentless worsening of conditions has begun to look more and more like demolition rather than deterioration. It feels intentional, and the efforts of urban district attorneys to criminalize self defense when the demographics of an incident fit a certain pattern has eroded public trust. Leaders like New York Mayor Eric Adams do worse than nothing in response to the decline, they incentivize it (though he’s promised to deploy more “behavioral health emergency assistance teams”).
Taking matters into one’s own hands, as Getz and the Marine did, is more than just vigilantism in today’s America. It is a spiritual violation of regime ideology, and so the branch must be cut from the decision tree. Even when justified — especially when justified. No, the authorities won’t do anything to prevent the maniac from threatening you and your family on the subway, but don’t you even think about taking action yourself.
This ain’t the movies, kiddo. The adults are in charge.
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