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On the other hand, assuming you're a man, you are still much more likely to be violent than much of the population. It seems to me that in order to justify your position, you have to rather arbitrarily draw a line right where it benefits you the most (you get the benefit of the doubt if you are doing something suspicious or disconcerting, but you don't have to extend the same benefit of the doubt to the group most likely to be able to harm you).
The base right of violent criminal activity is low, so even a substantially increased probability may still be low. And no, making a bad assumption and having it turn out to be correct is not right. It's lucky. Our legal system strongly discourages this form of argument--you cannot use information you did not have access to at the time in a self-defense argument, because it is very bad to encourage vigilantism with low standards. The legal system is surely far from perfect at determining guilt but it's a hell of a lot better than letting every random person off the street just decide that they think someone else did something wrong. I don't know the details of your encounters, but there are violent attacks that happen where the aggressor thinks they're completely in the right because they didn't understand the situation, or felt insulted, or think they have a right to other people's stuff, or whatever. Encouraging such behavior is likely to result in more public violence and should be a last resort at best.
This assumes that people are in one of two states: behaving in a deranged and menacing way in public, or minding their own business. That's not really the case though, there is a pretty smooth spectrum of menacing behavior people can exhibit in public.
If observers are being good basians, they will factor in the observed behavior in addition to more contextual information about a person. A well dressed white man drunkenly throwing a single strike at someone and not following it up would seem like a much bigger deal than a similarly attired 5'0" white woman doing the same to me, partially because the woman is much less physically imposing, but also because of what I know about rates of sexed violence and my guess about the likelihood of escalation to a point I couldn't easily control.
At the same time, waving a gun around is a red-alert pretty much no matter the identity of the person doing the waving.
Based on the descriptions I've seen, Jordan Neely was not actually behaving in any sort of violent way. That's why Hoffmeister has to resort to "statistical reality" about black people, to claim that agitated, annoying behavior can be construed as violent. This is not allowed as part of a legal argument for self-defense, with good reason, just like a woman walking alone can't turn around and shoot a man for following her on the public sidewalk and then make an argument about "statistical reality." A "good bayesian" can conclude anything they would like, given limited evidence, if their priors are sufficiently bad. This is why the law does not tell everyone to act like bayesians.
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The legal system was perfectly fine with letting Neely (and many similarly situated) continue his one man reign of terror. Fix that, and then maybe it'll have the legitimacy to judge the Marine.
A "reign of terror"? Are you deliberately taking the piss? He's not Jack the Ripper (the marine, however, did kill someone).
Yeah, "public nuisance crimes" are not what I would call a "reign of terror." No one knew who this guy was until he was killed. An open container of alcohol in public? Turnstile hopping? This forum will get incensed over the fact the FBI uses loopholes and process crimes to punish politicians and rich celebrities who lied to said FBI, and then turn around and seriously claim that these are very legitimate crimes that prove Neely was dangerous and it was a massive failure of law and order for him to still be on the streets. I haven't found any reference to kidnapping; the only serious or violent crimes I've seen reference to are 4 assaults (over 8 years) and without knowing more about those cases, it's wildly irresponsible to jump straight from "arrested" to "definitely guilty." Like, it's entirely possible that he did commit those crimes, and others, and the DA just let him go out of misplaced sympathy. It's also possible he got into altercations with other mentally ill homeless but it's unclear who was at fault. Or that he was misidentified, or was the victim of a false accusation for being weird and noisy in public (it's totally impossible that someone could overreact to him dancing and being loud on the subway, right? that would definitely never happen?).
I think it's highly unlikely he's never committed any legitimate crime, but spouting a number like "42 arrests" is actively misleading and "reign of terror" is a frankly embarrassing level of unsupported, pearl-clutching propaganda.
And it's even possible the veteran had mind-reading powers to get any of this information!
You're engaged in mockery, but when the veteran put him in that chokehold, he didn't even know any of this. Literally the only information he had was what he observed, Neely walking back and forth and angrily ranting. This was apparently sufficient to put him in a chokehold for, what, 10 minutes? 15? You can see some of the video here; Neely is barely responsive and the restraint continues. Like, sure, be skeptical of claims that he was as pure and innocent as the new-fallen snow. But also be skeptical of claims that he spent all his time terrorizing the populace and execution was the only solution.
There's a lot of subway weirdos. I suspect the crime rate would be much higher than it actually is if every subway weirdo regularly committed crimes.
What a sad and boring society it would be if we executed all weirdos.
It sounds like we agree, except that I wouldn't call anyone a coward for not acting. I've only been able to find 1 witness statement and no video from prior to Penny acting, but the one statement I found said Neely wasn't being violent. Maybe that's wrong, and the rest of this paragraph will turn out to be irrelevant. But being able to sit there and distinguish something that is aggravating or annoying, but not dangerous, and not respond to the former with violence, is essential to being able to participate in society. If you go to /r/IdiotsInCars, you'll see, among other things, a steady stream of people who go absolutely nuts in response to the slightest behavior they don't like. In my opinion, these are the people who are antisocial and disruptive to the community--the same accusations that many Motteizans have leveled at Neely.
I don't really know enough about all of those other countries to have more of an explanation than healthcare or locking up wackadoos (whether in prison or hospitals). Social contagion is in vogue recently, and American culture probably encourages more acting weirdly than other cultures, so maybe that provides part of an explanation. Americans do drive a lot, so maybe it just looks like there's a higher portion of wackadoos because fewer regular people take transit, but even in NYC there's a famously high number of wackadoos. Maybe they are forced to congregate in the few cities you can live without a car. Or perhaps other countries have stronger familial ties, and the family takes on the responsibility of sheltering the wackadoo--one article I saw claimed that Neely's problems largely started after his mother died.
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