The New York Times has finally caught on to what The Post has been saying for years: Homeless, mentally ill New Yorkers are a danger to themselves and others.
Too bad the “paper of record” can only circle back to the same old pre-ordained, progressive conclusions on the issue.
In damning detail, the Times did a deep dive into almost a hundred cases of violence committed by the homeless mentally ill under the city’s care.
Again and again, we see institutional breakdowns in communication and treatment that let menaces like Martial Simon slip in and out of institutions and treatment programs for years before graduating to murder, as Simon did in January 2022 when he brutally pushed Michelle Go beneath a subway train.
Among many other examples, the Times piece cites :
- Marcus Gomez, a 45-year-old schizophrenic who attempted to murder his grandmother’s caregiver by stabbing her 37 times after being discharged from a hospital. Gomez put it bluntly to the cops: “My mind made me do it.”
- Jamar Newton, with a history of bipolar disorder, who cracked the skull of a random stranger with a hammer in the subway after having been booted from shelter to shelter to shelter as he grew ever more deranged and threatening.
- The delusional paranoid Trevon Murphy, who attacked three other homeless men with a knife in summer of 2022, killing one and seriously injuring the others.
These violent men are themselves tragic — the system did indeed, as the Times points out, fail them.
But the paper says precious little of the lasting damage they’ve caused; it rushed their victims and the families of their victims out of the narrative frame.
And it takes great effort to assure the public that most mentally ill people aren’t violent, and such attacks are “relatively rare.”
That’s bad enough. Worse still are the “takeaways” the Times proposes readers derive from the story.
Yes, the Gray Lady is now going to tell you exactly what conclusions you’re permitted to draw from its reporting.
Those boil down to: Everyone is at fault except the perpetrators.
Nothing about combating the general climate of public disorder — such as by enforcing farebeating rules in the subway.
No need to try to stem the flood of dangerous drugs Gotham is awash in.
Not a word about better, stronger laws (like Kendra’s Law) around involuntary commitment, or rebuilding our state psychiatric-hospital capacity.
Even when confronted with reams and reams of evidence that its own reporters uncovered, the Times can’t face basic facts about the city’s mental-health violence crisis.
Nor can the liberals who read it, or the pro-crime progressives who drive its coverage.
Until they do, the bloodshed will only continue.
