In the aftermath of the shooting, councilor Alexa Avilés and MP Marcela Mitaynes, representing Sunset Park, said it showed “we need to invest in social services – housing, healthcare and education”. Politico wondered “What does the Brooklyn Metro shooting reveal about the state of mental health care?” So far? Nothing.
It is true that the city and state of New York leave seriously mentally ill people on the street, despite the multiple warning signs. Some of these people, like Martial Simon, who pushed Michelle Go to die under a subway in January, are violent. Simon had a documented history of delusions and coercion so severe that it could not work.
James is not that person. Although born in New York, James has no obvious recent ties to the city. By Wednesday, he had not been arrested here for nearly a quarter of a century.
It does not fit the profile of Simon or the men accused of killing Christina Yuna Lee and Krystal Bayron-Nieves this year: people who were recently arrested and released despite escalating episodes of rampant violence.
James claimed in his videos that the New York mental health system had failed him, but did not say when or how. If the education system failed, it did so five decades ago. (Maybe the lack of a school charter then failed him.) People are receiving help from other commuters after the April 12 subway shooting in Brooklyn. AP / Will B Wylde Our housing system has not failed, unless everyone who leaves New York for a different city fails for one reason or another. He found a home in Milwaukee and an Airbnb in Philly.
If the social services run by Milwaukee or any other city had noticed James’s devil on YouTube, in which he said that whites “kill and commit genocide against each other” and that they will do the same to “black your ass “, he stated that” white and black people. . . they should have no contact with each other “and praised September 11 as” a beautiful day “? These are disturbed thoughts – and, as Mayor Eric Adams said last week, high technology should stop allowing people to reinforce disturbed thoughts.
But you are allowed to have disturbed thoughts. It is permissible to believe that 9/11 was an internal affair. you are allowed to have strange racial theories. James, the alleged perpetrator of the Brooklyn subway, posted several related videos on social media before the attack. YouTube / prophetoftruth88 He can not ignore the fact that James was functional. As he said, he chose not to work consistently to live: “There is no way to. . . go to work, pay my taxes “. He was functional enough to plan and carry out a complex ideological attack across geographical boundaries. He was functional enough to gather the equipment he needed, to disguise himself as an MTA construction worker, to immediately throw away his disguise so that he could escape. He even arranged his arrest. There is a hint of supportive racism in the hypothesis that James did not do exactly what he planned to do, but rather “needed help”.
NYPD staff stand outside the subway entrance where the April 12 shooting occurred. John Minchillo / AP Anyone who commits a mass attack has mental problems. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVey probably had post-traumatic stress disorder and Boston Marathon bomber Johar Tsarnaev may have been manipulated by his brain brother. The 9/11 hijackers also had (obviously!) Disturbed thoughts. No one ever says they needed housing. Like these other attackers, James knows right from wrong and action and consequences. In a video, he said “I wanted to kill people” but “I do not want to go to f-king jail”.
Should the FBI have taken note of the videos released by James shortly before his attack, when he used more threatening language, saying, for example, that “the time has come”? The NYPD accompanies James in a police vehicle after his arrest. John Minchillo / AP Sure, but this is law enforcement, not social services. In addition, James did not make immediate threats – more elements of careful planning. It may be a good idea for social workers to interact more with people like James. But there are many such people: people on the frontiers of society, with plenty of time to cultivate miserable ideas. Is New York City going to chase each of these people and provide them with an apartment and daily intensive counseling so they don’t make a trip to the country to attack us? Nicole Gelinas is an editor at the City Journal of the Manhattan Institute.