The Vindication of Daniel Penny

(The Daily Signal)—It didn’t take long for Daniel Penny, the subway savior who was persecuted by the New York City justice system for having the temerity to help fellow passengers, to be completely vindicated.

By trying—and, fortunately, failing—to convict Penny in the death of Jordan Neely, a homeless drug addict with a long rap sheet who yelled out, “I don’t care if I die. I don’t care if I go to jail,” before being subdued, New York authorities signaled that they are more committed to social justice than genuine justice.

Violent criminals who have committed their lives to villainy will be given endless second, third, fourth, and 37th chances. They are victims of oppression, racism, and societal transgressions, according to the Left.

But if a good man individually steps in to help others in a moment of crisis, he will be punished. So, good men, if they are around at all, do nothing.

Like clockwork, several new violent and horrifying incidents took place on the New York City subway in the days before Christmas. One made national headlines.

On Sunday morning, a woman was lit on fire by an assailant while apparently sleeping on the F train. She later died from her injuries. A few viral videos emerged from the incident showing the woman being consumed by fire while the suspect in the attack literally fans the flames.

I won’t link to the videos here. You can find them yourself if you wish, but be warned, they are disturbing.

The videographers provided commentary, but no aid. In fact, nobody seemed to be doing anything to help the woman. In one of the videos, a police officer appeared to be standing near the burning victim, but made no attempt to rescue her from the fire.

The New York Police Department said the officer’s behavior was correct protocol, but it’s hard to imagine watching calmly as someone burns to death.

To make the incident even more heinous, the arson suspect is a 33-year-old illegal alien, Sebastian Zapeta-Calil. He had been staying at the Days Inn hotel on 36th Street, one of the city’s numerous taxpayer-funded “migrant” shelters.

Zapeta-Calil illegally crossed the U.S. southern border in 2018 before being deported by the Trump administration. He had since made his way back into the country.

Yet, somehow, this wasn’t the only serious incident in the past week.

On Christmas Eve, two people were stabbed at Grand Central Station.

The suspect, identified by police as 28-year-old Brooklyn native Jason Sargeant, began repeatedly yelling at a female victim, “What’s your problem?” He is said to have then lunged at her and slashed the 26-year-old’s throat.

“I wish I could be able to travel to my livelihood and not be attacked,” the victim said, The New York Post reported. “I wish there were cops in Grand Central when I was attacked. There were none. I was running for help, and there was no one there.”

She further said that no passersby even called 9-1-1, and that it was her neighbor who she was on a FaceTime call with when the attack happened who made that call.

These incidents are prime examples of why the “crime is actually plummeting” narrative we’ve heard from the media the past few years isn’t being bought by the public. There may be city and FBI data that show statistical declines in some crimes since it began skyrocketing in 2020, but our cities still feel chaotic, and these incidents are too frequent to be just random chance.

“The immolation was the 11th subway murder in New York City this year, surpassing this century’s high point of 10 in 2022,” the City Journal’s crime expert, Rafael Mangual, wrote on Monday. “Between 2000 and 2019, the NYC subways saw an average of 2.2 murders per year. Since 2020, the city has averaged eight murders a year—a nearly fourfold increase—despite significantly lower ridership, which means that the risk of such incidents is even higher than the raw numbers suggest.”

Somehow, tone-deaf Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul posted on social media just hours after the subway immolation, celebrating how she had made the subway safe and increased ridership.

Two hours ago, Kathy Hochul took a victory lap for making subways “safer.” She congratulates herself on the same day two subway riders were stabbed in Queens (one in the face and one in the chest) and another was barbarically burned alive.

Has there ever been a more tone-deaf… pic.twitter.com/KIPujqpKa3

— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) December 22, 2024

Incredible.

The party of Big Government doesn’t want to actually govern; it merely wants to rule. Its members insist on lecturing, coasting on vibes, and handing over policymaking to their ideologically fanatical activist class that thinks men can be women, no person is illegal, and criminals are the real victims.

The Regime says all is well: “Don’t trust your instincts or your lying eyes.” It has dubious government-approved (and later stealth-edited) stats and selfies to prove us wrong.

Yet, Americans can find plenty of evidence on social media and in their own lives that proves the entire lot of farcical, force-fed narratives to be bunk. Penny’s story resonated because, when a decent man had to intervene because of the failure of authorities to deal with street crime, those same authorities tried to turn him into the villain.

Now, everyone is paying the price because the justice system turned justice on its head.

Americans—even many New Yorkers—want the chaos and crime to stop. They want order restored. They don’t want to hear about illegal aliens killing subway riders and young girls. They don’t want to live in fear while commuting to work or going on a jog or visiting friends in the city.

Maybe now, as the evidence of failure becomes undeniable, something will change.