A former Marine held a man in a chokehold for over 15 minutes, killing him on Monday after the man was allegedly acting aggressively in a subway car in New York City.
Now, people in conservative circles are using the man’s arrest record to claim the killing was justified.
According to the New York Daily News, Jordan Neely was arrested over 40 times in the past 10 years. His most recent arrest came in November 2021 when he struck an elderly woman in the face.
While it’s unknown exactly what prompted the confrontation where the Marine killed Neely, some subway-goers reported Neely was throwing trash at people on the train.
That behavior, combined with Neely’s arrest record, has led far-right users to paint the killing by a civilian as justified. It’s the same tactic used in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd when people unbothered by the death cited drugs in Floyd’s system as a reason he may have died.
They’ve even come up with a derogatory moniker for Neely that mocks his homelessness, calling him “Bum Floyd.”
The nickname is a criticism outcry in the wake of the killing of Floyd in 2020 that sparked a summer of protests across the U.S. While many were outraged at the aggressive murder of Floyd at the hands of a police officer who kneeled on his neck for 9 minutes. Conservatives felt that Floyd was unjustly deified, citing his past arrests and calling him “no angel.”
Similarly, they are now trying to stem any backlash that supports Neely, believing because of his prior arrests, the Marine involved was justified to end someone’s life if he felt threatened and shouldn’t be charged.
“Operation Bum Floyd is meant to target people’s right to self-defense. Everything they say about it in the mass line is a lie or distortion,” wrote right-wing influencer James Lindsay. “It’s not worth arguing with them because they know they are doing it. It is worth showing people who don’t know what really happened.”
Other users have taken a similar spin on the moniker, calling him “Hobo Floyd.”
“They found their new George Floyd. Criminal record a mile long, gets in an altercation on a train and loses his life,” wrote Ian Miles Cheong. “Laws are not being upheld and citizens are taking matters into their own hands.”
“People are under no obligation to do nothing while a psychotic vagrant threatens them. Meanwhile the left is making this thug with 40 arrests their next George Floyd,” added another prominent conservative.
The comparison to Floyd, though, doesn’t seem to work the way right-wingers want it to. The police officer who killed Floyd, Derek Chauvin, was found guilty of homicide.
The medical examiner who performed an autopsy on Neely has ruled his death a homicide, making it potentially more likely the Marine who killed him could be charged with murder.
That person, though, has still not been named by police.
