Daniel Penny And The Uncomfortable Reality Of “Stepping Up”

On March 13th, 1964, in the early hours of the morning, a serial killer named Winston Moseley attacked a woman by the name of Kitty Genovese, stabbing her twice in the back as she walked from her car to her apartment building.

Fortunately, a neighbour heard her screams and shouted, “Let that girl alone,” from his apartment window, which prompted Moseley to run away. But unfortunately, the neighbour didn’t bother to call the police or check if Kitty was okay, so Moseley returned a few minutes later to “finish what [he] set out to do.”

The spot where Moseley found Kitty hiding was in direct line of sight of a different apartment. The guy who lived there even watched from his doorway for a while. But unfortunately, this neighbour was too “tired” to intervene. So he ignored her weakening cries for help and went back to bed.

The attack lasted around thirty-five minutes in total, with several residents admitting that they’d seen or heard Kitty fighting for her life. But none of them did anything to help her.

It was only once the screaming stopped, once Moseley had stabbed her fourteen times, raped her, and fled the scene, that one of Kitty’s neighbours crossed the roof of the building, knocked on the door of an elderly neighbour’s apartment, and persuaded her to call the police from her phone.

When an officer asked him why he’d hesitated for so long, why he’d gone to so much trouble to avoid calling the police himself, his answer spoke for everybody who was there that night:

“I didn’t want to get involved,” he said.

On May 1st, 2023, in the early afternoon, a mentally ill man named Jordan Neely boarded a New York subway train and began threatening to kill the passengers.

And unfortunately for him, an ex-marine named Daniel Penny got involved.

Penny and two other men held Neely down, with Penny applying a chokehold that he held onto for six minutes, apparently failing to notice that for five-and-a-half of those minutes, the train was in a station, with the doors open, with the passengers free to leave.

Although, if you’ve been following the discourse around the case, you’ll know this wasn’t the only thing Penny should have noticed.

He should have noticed, as the prosecution pointed out, that despite the death threats, Neely hadn’t actually hurt anybody when Penny restrained him. And quite right too. One should always wait until a mentally unstable man has stabbed or otherwise harmed his victims before taking action.

He should also have noticed, as several social media commentators pointed out, that Neely was unarmed at the time of the attack. After all, everybody knows it’s impossible for an assailant to conceal a knife or a gun.

He probably did notice, as the New York Chapter of BLM pointed out, that Neely is black, a fact that takes on heightened significance because Penny is white.

Surely Penny should have meditated on the historical oppression black people have suffered instead of trying to defend the numerous black passengers on the train. Or better yet, he should have “de-centred himself” and waited for a black passenger to risk his life.

But most importantly — and in all seriousness — Penny should have known, as anybody with martial arts training should know, that six minutes is far too long to keep someone in a chokehold (when properly applied, the average person will be unconscious in around ten seconds and brain-dead in around four minutes).

He should have known that there‘s no reason to restrain someone by crushing their throat with your forearm, especially when you have two other men helping you to hold him down.

And he should have known that Jordan Neely wasn’t “just a crackhead,” as he described him in a police interview, but a human being who had people who loved him. A man who was in desperate need of help.

Maybe, in different circumstances, he’d have seen all that as clearly as the rest of us.