Two days ago here in New York City, someone was randomly pushed onto the subway tracks and killed by an oncoming train. The subway-shove suspect is an EDP—an “emotionally disturbed person” as per emergency-services parlance. Many New Yorkers still remember the headlines two years ago when Michelle Go was randomly pushed to her death onto the train tracks, also by an EDP—someone that we later learned had previously told a psychiatrist at a state-run psychiatric hospital that it was just a matter of time before he would push someone onto the tracks.
(The subway-shoving murder isn't even the only high-profile murder that happened here in NYC on Monday. Within the same hour, an on-duty officer was gunned down, allegedly by someone who had previously served time for drug trafficking. As the suspect was not legally allowed to own a gun, it showed once again the failure of gun control measures)
I wrote about my own experience with a knife-wielding EDP last year. And when there was a mass shooting in a subway car back in 2022 that injured 10 people, I was in a train car just a few stops away. (I later found out that the teenage son of a friend of my mother’s was shot in the arm in that incident)
EDPs are usually middle-aged homeless men with a long psychiatric history. They seem to especially be concentrated in subway stations and inside train cars, where a literally captive audience has to watch them stumble around, often either screaming or mumbling incoherently. The National Guard was deployed to the NYC subway system a few weeks ago, but they don’t have the right to detain someone that didn’t commit a crime, so their presence is largely ornamental. Their regulations prevent them from doing anything until after someone is seriously injured or even killed.
When an EDP walks into a train car, there’s often a silent game played by passengers where everyone pretends that he (it’s almost always a he) doesn’t exist. No matter how much noise he’s making, the temporary inhabitants of the train car turn into stone-faced statues. Why would anyone do anything? The EDP has nothing to lose. You, the passenger just trying to get to work, has everything to lose: your job, your future, your life. The most high-profile case of someone who confronted an EDP that was threatening passengers is currently facing homicide charges.
I will discuss the case of Daniel Penny in-depth in an upcoming essay. For now, I’m thinking about the “not my problem” problem. In large cities like New York, the entire system is set up so that residents are encouraged to say “not my problem” to everything. It's not like a small town at all, as Jason Aldean would attest to. People come to the city for a few years, people leave. People get into a train car for a few minutes, maybe half an hour, people leave. People are brought to mental hospitals that can hold patients involuntarily for 72 hours, people leave.
The life of an EDP usually involves a revolving door of people throwing their hands up and saying “not my problem.” I’ve read many stories about the lives of perpetrators of random violent crime. There's often a tumultuous early life involving being raised by grandparents or by single mothers. So before the child is even born, there was already an absent father that said “not my problem.” Kids born to single parents already have much harder time with life and act out more, and then they go to schools where exasperated teachers go “not my problem.” Then the EDP usually passes through a lot of psychiatrists and social workers that have to triage their work, not be a full-time caretaker. It's easier to say “not my problem” and just leave it for someone else to deal with, and then that someone else will also say the same, and the cycle will continue.
Middle-class liberal parents often give their kids a lot of freedom. And it usually works for them because they're surrounded by people that are ambitious and want to succeed educationally. Those parents then assume that their styles work for everyone. But it's not true. People are not born as blank slates. Some kids need more guidance than others, especially if they live in an environment where the other kids don't have the drive to do well in school. We live in a liberal democracy where we are taught that all humans are created equal—but that means that we all have equal moral worth, not that all humans have the the same capabilities.
So by the time EDPs show up on the subway, they've usually already had a whole life of “not my problem.” Now this is where the situation switches to a different kind of “not my problem.” We're all strangers in the subway. We don't know the people we're with, and they don't know us. Why risk everything to confront someone that could kill you? This isn’t just a hypothetical. Back in 2017, three men confronted an EDP that was shouting slurs in a train car in Portland—and two of them were stabbed to death, leaving behind grieving families.
And everyone knows the charges that Daniel Penny is facing here in NYC, so people who may have intervened may have decided not to because of the potential legal consequences. EDPs aren’t worried about going to prison or even dying. The EDP in the Daniel Penny incident was shouting “I don't mind going to jail and getting life in prison. I'm ready to die.” But everyone else just trying to get home from work and see their families. So everyone just says “not my problem,” and the EDP can continue to roam around the subway system. Most won’t attack anyone—but a few will, and people will die.
So how do we keep passengers safe? Somewhere along the line, before an EDP can commit a violent attack, someone needs to make the EDP their “problem.” Many people, for humanitarian reasons, don't want to imagine another human being as a problem to be fixed. I agree—it's not the person that's the problem, it's the condition. And if the condition isn't fixed, innocent people may die—people that just want to get home from work in peace and in one piece.
No one likes having to take responsibility. Which is why such an undertaking needs to come with legal changes. Laws will have to be passed and enforced to give mental-health professionals more authority in deciding how long someone can be involuntarily hospitalized—and to greatly expand institutionalization for chronically homeless EDPs. Those against bringing back the asylum system argue that “supportive housing, employment, and access to welfare” can fix everything—which betrays a lack of understanding about genetics and mental health. Not everyone has the same ability to stick to a routine. The blank slate myth has harmed way more people than it has helped—and has sometimes proved fatal.
Well Yang, if the government can't - or won't - protect its citizens who are just trying to get back and forth to work and home to their families, why are we paying taxes to them? Securing "domestic tranquility" is the number one function of government (in addition to the common defense), if they can't even do that, we have no need for them. And so society continues to devolve and spirals down to the law of the jungle. Democrats are the problem, not the answer.
"Laws will have to be passed and enforced to give mental-health professionals more authority in deciding how long someone can be involuntarily hospitalized"
Nice Idea, but I doubt that any Democrat currently holding elected office would dare to vote for that.
"—and to greatly expand institutionalization for chronically homeless EDPs."
And I doubt that any Republican currently holding elected office would dare to vote to pay for that.