NEW YORK DAILY NEWS!
No girl ends up semi-conscious on the floor of a McDonald’s surrounded by a raucous mob, no girl repeatedly kicks another in the head, and no girls punch furiously as a group for three minutes without having traveled dead-end paths.
The fight video that stunned New York, and information that has since emerged about some of its participants, point to severe social pathologies and failures by the adults and institutions responsible for raising the young.
This melee was more than a flash-of-the-moment brawl. It was planned and sustained violence, the product of a gross adult abdication that left the moral development of children to children — like “Lord of the Flies,†but with smartphones.
And, in other cases, guns.
Youth and likely deprivation are no excuse for gang brutality. The NYPD is arresting the brawlers, including a girl who attempted to flee to the island of Jamaica. They must face the weight of the criminal justice system.
That said, no matter how viciously the primary combatant behaved, it was astonishing and appalling to see 16-year-old Aniah Ferguson arraigned on charges that could put her away for decades, alone, without the support of a parent or guardian, and held on a half-million dollars’ bail.
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Mr. Mayor, do you not see that you are presiding over communities that are the equal of Charles Dickens’ London?
It’s time, Mr. Mayor, to stop talking about the tale of two cities and frankly confront the one where today’s other half lives.
Recognizing the gravity of the forces that have captured the fighters and their cheering squad, a truly visionary progressive mayor would seize the moment to delve unflinchingly into the dynamics of home and neighborhood that have blighted the futures of all involved, as well as into the responses of public agencies.
Bill de Blasio would well serve New York by appointing a high-powered commission to examine how all these young women went so far off-track.
Among others, membership would include the police, child welfare and probation commissioners, the schools chancellor and the chief Family Court judge, as well as clergy on the level of Timothy Cardinal Dolan, civic activists on the level of Mike Gecan of Metro IAF, and health experts on the level of Ken Davis, president of Mount Sinai Medical Center.
These names are cited not to suggest they are interested or available but only to indicate the stature de Blasio should reach for as he tasks such a panel with examining the history of each girl.
Was she from a broken home? Did she reach the age of 16 while reading, say, at a third-grade level or was she headed toward a meaningful high school diploma? And so on.
Consider Ferguson’s degree of dysfunction. Neighbors report that she has an infant child living with her, even as her grandmother secured an order of protection against her following a punching assault. She was arrested a second time for stabbing her brother — and four times more for other offenses, all in less than a year.
What happened to her? Where was the Administration for Children’s Services? Where was the mental health care she may have needed?
Then, there’s 15-year-old Ariana Taylor, target of the assault. She glories in her victimhood on Facebook, supported by fans equally disconnected from accepted norms.
Her social media associates hint that Taylor may have been absent from school for weeks as the beef that led to the McDonald’s showdown brewed. Still more, she refuses to cooperate with police, as does her mother.
Asked about the McDonald’s attack, de Blasio responded as if it were merely one more crime. He called for Ferguson’s prosecution, as is permissible and warranted under the law. But does he really want to keep imprisoning 16-year-olds rather than intervene earlier to prevent the ruination of their lives?
New York needs to know exactly what went so horribly wrong for the McDonald’s youngsters, how extensive the pathologies are, where government went wrong — and, most important, what the city’s mayor will do to protect more of the city’s children from the same fates.
