| | | | |  | | By Maya Kaufman | With help from Ella Creamer, Jesse Naranjo, Rishika Dugyala and Teresa Wiltz
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POLITICO illustration/Photo by Craig Ruttle/Pool via AP | Hey, Recast family! I’m filling in today from POLITICO’s New York bureau. It’s been quite the week. Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is pushing for a debt deal this weekend, Marjorie Taylor Greene introduces articles of impeachment against the president, and Twitter and Google score big wins at the Supreme Court. But today, we’re talking about the tragic subway killing that’s roiling New York. As New York City’s public advocate — the city’s second-highest ranking office — Jumaane Williams may not have the power to vote on legislation, but he’s been using his watchdog role to probe police behavior and skewer the city’s response to people experiencing a mental health crisis. Both issues came to a head earlier this month with the subway killing of Jordan Neely, a Black man who was homeless and in emotional distress and acting erratically. Video footage showed Daniel Penny, a white Marine veteran, putting Neely into a chokehold that killed him within minutes. Penny, who was charged with manslaughter a week later, has both been embraced by conservatives as a Good Samaritan — and wielded as a political sledgehammer to bash Democrats’ policies on crime. His defense fund has raised well over $1 million.
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Mayor Eric Adams, an ex-NYPD captain and Republican-turned-Democrat, said he will “let the investigation run its course” and has refused to comment on Penny’s actions, even as he later acknowledged, “One of our own is dead — a Black man, Black like me.” Instead he has pivoted to talking about Neely’s mental health history and his interactions with the city’s safety net.
That didn’t sit well with Williams, who appeared on CNN to slam the mayor’s response. “I also am concerned that we have a mayor who has yet to say that vigilantism is not what we want,” said Williams, who unsuccessfully ran for governor of New York last year, losing to incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul in the Democratic primary by a wide margin. As public advocate, Williams, a former City Council member, serves as an ombudsman of sorts for city government, investigating complaints about city services and regulations and making proposals to the City Council to improve conditions for New Yorkers. The son of immigrants from Grenada, the Brooklyn native shares his thoughts on the role of race in the perception of public safety and what wasn’t said (and should’ve been). ◆◆◆ This interview has been edited for length and clarity. THE RECAST: How do you make sense of Mayor Adams’ immediate response to Jordan Neely’s killing? He said, “There’s a lot we don’t know about what happened here.” But he hasn’t condemned Penny’s actions. Who is he speaking to? What does his reaction say about his politics and his policy objectives? WILLIAMS: It was very concerning to me. There were some messages that actually still haven’t been said and should be said. One is immediately, “We should humanize Jordan Neely and make sure we’re clear that it's not OK to choke a person, even a Black homeless man.” The mayor has talked about cases before. I don't know why this one is so different, to have a conversation and say he saw what we all saw. I’m not sure who he was speaking to. I do know this past election we saw several folks really pushing a narrative that wasn’t true and sometimes leaning on Republican talking points. New York paid dearly for that in the election and the country paid dearly for that. My hope is that we learned a lesson, but I'm not sure that happened. Talking about how [Neely] died was something that was still left out of [Adams’] speech that was given [last week]. When we don't do that, we continue to dehumanize his life and continue to allow an environment where someone may step in again, and that’s concerning.
|  Mayor Eric Adams, pictured, "has talked about cases before," Williams says. "I don't know why this one is so different, to have a conversation and say he saw what we all saw." | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images | THE RECAST: How does this compare to Bernard Goetz’s 1984 shooting of four Black teenagers on the subway, as far as race and the perception of public safety? And are you worried about more vigilantism, here or elsewhere? WILLIAMS: This is very similar to the Bernard Goetz case. There’s a through line there that Black and brown people in general are inherently more dangerous and a lot of things can be done to them without recourse. We see that up and down throughout this country, throughout this system. When you have an incident like this and you don’t have leaders that call it out, that does create an environment that’s dangerous. We understand that people are afraid. We have to figure out how we best deal with that. This was not that. Being uncomfortable on a train isn't a license to murder. Jordan Neely is dead today because he was Black, homeless and angry, and that needs to be called out in a more specific way.
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| THE RECAST: You’ve said elected officials and the media created an environment in which this killing could occur. Specifically, you said they use language that “encourages fear of and violence against people who are struggling, that paints them as a threat to public safety.” I’ve been thinking a lot about that as I see numerous news stories about Neely’s past and very little about the person who killed him. How should people in power and positions of influence rethink how they talk about these issues and what they choose to talk about? WILLIAMS: There were a few days there where it was just a homeless man with mental health problems versus a Marine — so just in how they were presenting it to people was pretty concerning. We have seen, again, elected officials continuously feed the fear, using Republican-lite talking points. And they're not talking points that are rooted in facts. They’re rooted in fear. The way I've seen leaders talk about violence in places like New York City is wildly exaggerating what has actually happened. I see cases in the New York Post with salacious headlines time and time again — which, by the way, are talking about real people who were harmed, so I don't want to diminish that. It far outpaces the crime that’s actually happening, instills the type of fear where this can happen. If you tack on race and class and how those things are reported, then you have a situation where this can occur again. THE RECAST: So how should people rethink how they talk about these issues?
|  Public Advocate Jumaane Williams speaks at a May 10 news conference with other officials and mental health advocates at the Broadway-Lafayette station, where Jordan Neely was fatally choked. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images | WILLIAMS: You should definitely talk about it immediately and humanize the experience. Jordan Neely was having a human experience where he was expressing his needs. Talk about how the system actually failed him and what it is that we can do to prevent that from happening. New York City is one of the safest big cities in the country. We should always talk about this in the context of what's going on. We also should root it in what actually works. We've seen, between the beginning of the country and now, simply locking up as many Black and brown people is not what keeps us safe — saying that we have to simply arrest our way out of this. I've never seen a population of folks be [so] ready to accept the fact that public safety is a holistic approach. They're ready to listen. But we don't have leaders that will feed them a plan. We have leaders that will feed them fear and a media that will feed them fear. THE RECAST: What do you make of the fact that in the media there has been so much probing of Neely’s past and very little of Penny’s, and how do you think race plays into that? WILLIAMS: Time and time again, apparently Black people are the only ones that have anything they've done in their life written on their jackets or shirts. After any kind of death by law enforcement, in this case a civilian, the immediate playbook is to try to dehumanize and bring up a reason that would justify the death. We don't see the reverse. THE RECAST: Are you pushing for any specific reforms on the city, state or national levels?
|  People attend a vigil at City Hall Park for Jordan Neely on May 11 in New York. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images | WILLIAMS: Part of the mayor's response is making it seem as if all we have to do is involuntarily hospitalize people and that will solve the problem. That's not the case. The question is, what happens after hospitalization? People who are in a mental health crisis and having a problem getting the care they need are more likely to be victims of crimes than the reverse. THE RECAST: Do you think this will be the time that changes things? WILLIAMS: I don’t know what else it could take. We keep adding more names to the list. We have to begin to talk about how we prevent these things from happening. I hope this is a turning point. Across the country we’ve seen people become more fearful, and when they become fearful, when they become uncomfortable, we've seen people begin to kill other people for accidentally knocking on their door, accidentally going in their driveway, accidentally going in the wrong car, being afraid on the train. And that is now causing people to kill one another. We need to have leadership that will take the time to tone that down. THE RECAST: How do you make people feel less afraid, beyond just trotting out data? WILLIAMS: You have to acknowledge the fear and acknowledge that it's rooted in something. You have to feel safe. Sometimes when you are completely safe, just feeling unsafe can cause you to act in a way that is harmful. We have to present a plan that's rooted in real safety, and the plans that we put forth are not. They're rooted in addressing a fear-based hysteria that's being pushed by elected officials that want to win elections and pushed by media outlets, that their business model is putting salacious headlines out there. We just have to pull that back.
|  | | THE RECAST: How do you reconcile that with the people who do say that more police presence makes them feel safer? There are Black communities in New York City that voted for Mayor Adams because, as he’s said, this is actually what these communities want. WILLIAMS: I want to make clear that the same people who voted for Mayor Adams voted for myself as public advocate and a City Council that's been more aligned with us on how we address public safety. They didn't just vote for one person. You are correct that they do mention that they would like to have additional police officers, but that’s not all they mention. They also say we'd like to have more mental health support, more affordable housing, more funding in our schools, to have better food options. But for some reason people only hear the police answer. So the question is not why are they saying that? The question is, “Why don't we hear anything else?” People understand that public safety is complex, but we just keep doing the same thing over and over. A community that has the most police are the ones that we consider the least safe. And by the way, it's not because law enforcement doesn't have a role to play. They do.
|  Public Advocate Jumaane Williams joins others as they march against systemic racism, Oct. 10, 2022, on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images | But it's because so many of our other partners are not present, or they're not properly funded. If we want to support law enforcement, we should stop asking them to do the job of everybody else. We know what the outcome is going to be when they don't have the tools to address it. In most places that I’ve been, one of the most robust parts of the budget is the police. They have the most access to overtime. What if other agencies had similar access to budgets and overtime? Things would look a lot different. ◆◆◆ Before we send you off to enjoy your Friday, here are some weekend to-dos: Brandon Taylor’s latest novel, “The Late Americans,” presents a smorgasbord of characters in the process of self-discovery. Yayoi Kusama’s new exhibit, “I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers,” is as inventive as it is infinite. (And it’s free! But prepare to wait in line.) The 10th installment of the Fast & Furious franchise, “Fast X,” is out in cinemas today. Old favorites return — Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson — joined by new faces including Jason Momoa. The Y2K vibes of Marion Jola’s new video might just be your “Cup of Tea.”
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| “Great Performances: Richard III,” with “Black Panther” star Danai Gurira in the titular role, shows tonight on PBS at 9. The video for Bad Bunny’s utterly danceable “Where She Goes” features a giant bonfire, a vintage Rolls-Royce and cameos from the likes of Ronaldinho, Frank Ocean and Lil Uzi Vert.
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