In the next week after the alleged attack by Frank James on the Brooklyn subway, it became accepted wisdom that the social services system in New York or America had failed him – and us. Yet no one has shown a way in which social services could stop this attack. What we have is what it looks like: a bad person who intelligently plans and executes a bad thing.
Following the mass shooting, councilor Alexa Aviles and MP Marcela Mitteines, who represent Sunset Park, said it showed how much “we need to invest in social services – housing, health and education”. Politico wondered “What the Brooklyn subway shooting reveals about mental health.”
So far? Nothing.
It is true that New York and the state leave seriously mentally ill people on the street, despite the many warning signs. Some of these people, such as Marcial Simon, who pushed Michelle Go until her death under the subway in January, are violent. Simon had a documented history of delusions and coercion, so severe that he could not function.
James is not this man. James, though born in New York, has no visible recent ties to the city. He had not been arrested here for almost a quarter of a century until Wednesday.
He does not fit the profile of Simon or the people accused of killing Christina Yuna Lee and Crystal Byron-Neeves this year: people recently arrested and released, despite escalating episodes of uncontrolled violent impulses.
James claims in his video sentences that New York’s mental health system failed him, but did not say when or how. If the education system failed, it did five decades ago. (Maybe the lack of charter schools failed him then.)
People are receiving help from other travelers after the April 12 subway shooting in Brooklyn. AP / Will B Wylde
Our housing system does not fail, unless it fails anyone who leaves New York for a different city for one reason or another. He found a home in Milwaukee and Airbnb in Philly.
Should social services run by Milwaukee or any other city have noticed James’ hideouts on YouTube, in which he says that white people “kill and commit genocide against each other” and will do the same with “your black ass”? said that “white people and blacks. . . should they have no contact with each other “and praised September 11 as a” beautiful day “?
These are frustrated thoughts – and, as Mayor Eric Adams said last week, big technology must stop allowing people to intensify frustrated thoughts.
But you are allowed to have upset thoughts. You are allowed to think that September 11 was an internal affair; you are allowed to have strange racial theories.
James, the alleged shooter on the Brooklyn subway, posted numerous videos on social media before the attack. YouTube / prophetoftruth88
There is no way around the fact that James was functional. As he himself said, he chose not to work all the time to make a living: “There is no way. . . 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 necessary equipment, to disguise himself as an MTA construction worker, to drop his disguise immediately so he could escape. He even organized his own arrest.
There is a hint of patronizing racism in the assumption that James did not do exactly what he intended to do, but rather “needs help.”
NYPD personnel are standing in front of the subway entrance, where the April 12 shooting took place. John Minchilo / AP
Anyone who carries out a mass attack has mental health problems. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, may have had post-traumatic stress disorder, and the Boston Marathon bomber Johar Tsarnaev may have been manipulated by his brain brother. The September 11 kidnappers also (obviously!) Had upset thoughts.
No one ever says they need housing services.
Like these other attackers, James knows right from wrong, action, and consequence. In a video, he said, “I wanted to kill people,” but “I don’t want to go to hell.”
Did the FBI have to focus on the videos James released just before his attack, when he used more threatening language, saying, for example, that “it’s time”?
The NYPD accompanies James in a police car after his arrest. John Minchilo / AP
Of course, but this is law enforcement, not social services. Besides, James made no direct threats, more evidence of careful planning.
Maybe it’s a good idea for social services agencies to interact more with people like James. But there are many such people: people on the border of society, with a lot of time to cultivate stupid ideas.
Will New York persecute each of these people and provide him with an apartment and daily intensive consultations so that he does not travel here to attack us?
Nicole Gelinas is an editor and contributor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
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