Victor Davis Hanson to Newsmax: Good Samaritans Put off by Rush to Judgment

Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, told Newsmax on Thursday that Good Samaritans who try to help when the situation warrants are being put off by the rush to judgment and armchair quarterbacking that often follows.

New York City subway busker Jordan Neely, 30, died after a former Marine put him in a chokehold for about 15 minutes Monday on a northbound F train. The incident was partly captured on cellphone video and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., tweeted that Neely was murdered before the death was ruled a homicide by the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

Hanson said people should not rush to judgment because all of the facts have yet to come out and some reports suggest that Neely was acting hostile and erratic in the subway.

“We don’t have all the circumstances, so we can’t determine what’s going on, but what do you do when you have scenes like [that] in Chicago or Compton?” Hanson said during an appearance on Newsmax‘s new show “Carl Higbie FRONTLINE.” “And almost daily on social media where people are breaking the law, they’re getting in people’s faces, they’re threatening them, they’re acting antisocial, and no one does anything because the police are not there or they won’t do anything.

“So, unfortunately, we’re going to see a lot of this, and I don’t think it’s a racialized killing,” he continued. “If you look at hate crimes, and this is what it’s being advertised as, the so-called African American community commits hate crimes of double their numbers in the population.

“They’re about 12% to 13%, 25% of most reported hate crimes are attributed to African Americans. The so-called white population, 67% to 70%, is about 60% or 70% of their demographics, so they’re underreported. So, when you look at these incidents, it’s always better to take a deep breath and say, ‘What is the data?'”

Hanson pointed to statistics on the shooting of unarmed suspects by police as another example where the data doesn’t back up the inflated claims.

“Same thing about shooting suspects by policemen that was supposedly epidemic, according to people like LeBron James — and it’s not,” he said. “Out of about 11 million arrests, you have 25 to 30 shootings of unarmed suspects.

“I’m sure that if the roles were reversed, and this had been an African American ex-Marine, and he saw a homeless white person threatening people or acting antisocial and he thought he was going to be a Good Samaritan and stop it, there wouldn’t be a controversy. I think everybody would praise him for doing that.

“I know I would, even though I wouldn’t praise the excessive use of force, but when you get into that situation, it’s hard to calibrate the proper course,” he added.

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