Left’s war on America: Jordan Neely as the new George Floyd.

Daniel Penny: The Marine Corps Veteran Who Stood Up to a Threatening Homeless Person

The Story

Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old Marine Corps veteran, recently made headlines for taking action when a homeless person began threatening fellow subway passengers. However, his heroic act has landed him in legal trouble, and he has hired a lawyer to help him avoid spending decades in prison.

The Manhattan District Attorney has assigned Joshua Steinglass, a veteran prosecutor, to conduct the probe that will determine whether Penny will be put on trial for killing Jordan Neely, the 30-year-old homeless person who died during the incident on May 1. The liberal commentariat is already damning Penny, with leftist politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accusing him of having committed a “murder” and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul demanding that “justice” be given to Neely’s family.

The Background

Neely had a record of mental illness and had been arrested 44 times for criminal conduct. On an F train stopped at the Broadway-Lafayette Street subway station in Manhattan, he allegedly began acting in a threatening manner to other passengers. It was at that point that Penny restrained him and put him in what appears on a cell phone video of part of the incident to be a chokehold.

In doing so, it could well be argued that he prevented Neely from committing another crime against a fellow passenger. Video released Sunday also seems to show Penny put Neely in a recovery position after Neely was subdued and appeared to be OK.

However, the reason this case is already a cause celebre is that Neely’s fate is blamed on the supposed indifference of the public to the lives of the homeless.

The Broader Ramifications

Penny’s fate will be a test of whether young American men should dare to act courageously when others are in peril. But there’s even more at stake in this case. With Neely being anointed as the new George Floyd, the questions of whether Penny was right to restrain Neely or if he used inappropriate force to do so are merely sidebars to a broader narrative about American racism.

The prosecution of the ex-Marine will not just establish a precedent that there is a “right” of a deranged, drug-addicted person to terrorize others with impunity. It will also, like Floyd’s death or that of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, or a dozen other equally dubious cases, be routinely cited from now on as proof of American racism and a reason for doubling down on woke policies that will further divide and racialize the nation.

The Takeaway

Leftists believe that, like Floyd, Neely died for our sins as a racist nation. That is why he is now being elevated to the status of secular saint regardless of or perhaps even because of his dysfunction and willingness to threaten others. The Floyd case led to de-policing throughout the country as cops, the only defense minority communities have against the black-on-black crime that afflicts their neighborhoods, have backed down in the face of prosecutions and demonization.

Penny’s prosecution will now pump new life into the BLM movement and ensure that public discourse about race and crime will continue to ignore the facts in favor of ideological myths that will send America’s cities into even greater squalor, violence, and racial conflict.