By Bruce C.T. Wright
Black America Web
Reprinted – by Texas Metro News
https://blackamericaweb.com
Video of the incident has gone viral.
A Metro train rolls into the McPherson Square station in Washington, D.C. | Source: Getty Images / Getty
In the year after a white man on the New York City subway took the law into his own hands and carried out a physical attack against unsuspecting and unarmed Black men, history nearly repeated itself about 241 miles south in the Metro public transit subway system of Washington, D.C.
In that instance, a white man also went into vigilante mode this past summer and shoved a Black performer in the middle of a dance routine in a Metro subway car, according to the Washington City Paper, which first reported on the incident this week.
In both cases, white men acted violently out of a perceived and not actual threat. Also in both cases, the white men have said they feel as if they were the aggrieved parties with the authority to dole out punishment that they see fit.
In the case of Daniel Penny, who employed a sprawling chokehold against Jordan Neely, an unhoused and unarmed Black street performer who was in the throes of a mental health crisis, a jury on Monday found him not guilty of committing any crime at all.
In an interview with Fox News following his acquittal, Penny said Neely’s “threats were imminent and something had to be done” despite witnesses testifying during the manslaughter trial that Neely never did anything physical and was only yelling before he threw his jacket onto the floor of the subway train, prompting Penny’s lethal wrath.
In the case of Harold Christy, who angrily shoved the dancer entirely out of the Metro train’s door and onto the subway platform, the investigator with the D.C. Office of the Inspector General (OIG), like Penny, is portraying himself as innocent of any crime.
In a letter Christy wrote to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Board of Directors and posted on the Reddit social media platform, he described himself as “a US Army combat veteran; a DC homeowner, voter, and taxpayer” who was “minding my own business in my suit, holding a briefcase and reading a magazine” when “individuals aboard the train began to play extremely loud and obscene music while dancing and aggressively panhandling in the aisle.”
Like Penny, Christy deputized himself as a savior of train passengers, none of whom chose to react to the performer with violence. Christy wrote that he “demanded that the dancers stop their criminal and dangerous activity.” He also portrayed himself as a victim because the performers naturally moved to defend themselves after Christy initiated the unprompted violent contact.
Christy’s letter also describes the moment “several weeks later” when he was arrested for misdemeanor assault. He bemoaned spending “a day in leg irons, a belly band, and handcuffs while waiting for my arraignment in Superior Court. For defending myself and others.”
Christy also posted a link to video footage from that fateful Metro encounter so that independent viewers can make their own determination as to who was in the wrong.
Harold Christy, in the hat at right, is shown shoving a performer off a Metro train. | Source: WMATA screenshot
In an interview with the City Paper, Christy compared the dancers’ performance to a “false imprisonment.”
While Christy’s situation bears a number of similarities to Penny’s there are a few notable differences.
First and foremost, no one was killed. This is an important point to make because Christy, as an OIG investigator, said he was legally armed with a gun that day on the Metro in July.
Secondly, Christy is being held accountable beyond the limitations of the law since the OIG has placed him on administrative leave. If Christy is found guilty, which the video evidence suggests he will be, he is likely to lose his job for the unnecessary vigilante violence.
Like Penny before his acquittal, Christy is also facing the prospect of incarceration.
Also like Penny, Christy is unapologetic.
“I don’t regret anything,” Christy, told the City Paper. “Because I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Coincidentally, Bernhard Goetz — dubbed “the subway vigilante” after he shot four Black teenagers at close range on a train in Manhattan nearly 40 years ago because of a perceived threat — like Christy and Penny still believes he didn’t do anything wrong. Goetz said he believed the teens were trying to mug him and reacted out of self-defense when they asked him and other passengers for money on Dec. 22, 1984. Goetz was ultimately acquitted of attempted murder and only found guilty on a gun charge.
Goetz, like Penny and Christy, claimed he wouldn’t change a thing and would do it again if placed in a similar situation.
And like both Penny and Goetz, true accountability for Christy initiating vigilante violence against unarmed Black people is far from guaranteed.
This is America.
