Free Republic

"Riders on the subway deserve to have a ride where they don’t feel threatened. And the mentally ill deserve to have the treatment and the protection..." "... that would allow them to work out their struggles in the protected space. We can’t have a subway system that’s both a system of transportation and housing for the homeless. Those are incompatible goals." Said Gregory Umbach, associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, quoted in "After homeless man choked on subway, NYC grapples with treatment of mentally ill" (WaPo).The incident makes me think of Bernhard Goetz, and reading on,...

He went from tokens to toking. “Subway vigilante” Bernie Goetz has turned to peddling pot, cops say, decades after he pumped five shots into four black teenagers, skyrocketing him to national fame and infamy. The gunman, who divided the city after shooting four black teens in 1984, was arrested in Manhattan after selling a small amount of marijuana to an undercover narcotics cop Friday evening, police said. Goetz, who will be celebrating his 66th birthday next Thursday, reportedly chatted up the undercover female officer at Union Square Park at about 5:30 p.m. and “asked her if she wanted to get...