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To the editor:
The Rev. Al Sharpton said that the manslaughter charge against Daniel Penny is just the first step in getting justice for Jordan Neely. As in the past with incidents, including the Tawana Brawley hoax, once the opportunist and former FBI informant gets ahold of a racially newsworthy cause, he won’t back down even when the facts don’t match up with his charged rhetoric.
Al Sharpton has brains and a preacher’s skill in motivating a crowd of supporters. However, it is obvious that Sharpton won’t seek the truth and tell the truth when the facts conflict with his divisive positions. He is skilled at exploiting racially charged incidents, and he has little interest if race isn’t at the center of an issue.
I am sure that if Daniel Penny is tried by a jury composed of mostly fair-minded people, his chances of being convicted are very low.
To compare the actions of Daniel Penny, a private citizen who acted to protect himself and other subway passengers from what Jordan Neely threatened to do, with the depraved actions of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in murdering George Floyd, is outrageous; it is deliberately equating very different cases for political and racial purposes.
Through his attorneys, Penny said he thought he was using necessary force to restrain a violent Jordan Neely and eliminate the threat. The fact that other passengers thought they had to help Penny restrain Neely shows that a number of passengers considered Neely’s threats to be serious and dangerous.
Al Sharpton and other race-baiters are not interested in justice in the case of Daniel Penny and Jordan Neely. Isn’t it past time to stop treating Al Sharpton with the respect that he doesn't deserve?
Michael J. Gorman
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Admin
Excellent. I used to think that Sharpton had improved with time and that his offensive behavior was in the distant past. I was wrong. To paraphrase Ralph Kramden, "He's never going to be any different. He's going to be the same old way."
Wednesday, July 5, 2023 Report this
wpeakes
While I respect your expertise and experience Mr. Gorman, I'm reserving my final judgement on Daniel Penny until I see the video of Jordan Neely actually making real physical threats. I'd also like to see interviews or statements from those individuals who had a tangible, actual fear that their lives were in imminent danger that Mr. Penny felt he had to protect;
not just a "feeling". The bar must be set high when someone decides to intervene in a way that could entail possible deadly consequences with the same kind of caution you used when you worked for the NYPD. And from what's been reported and the videos I've seen so far, Mr. Penny (and those that held Mr. Neely's hands and arms while Mr. Penny was applying the choke hold that killed him) went way, way, way too far.
Wednesday, July 5, 2023 Report this