At Blakeman's NYC rally

Daily Point

Blakeman and the Penny case 

The rally conducted by Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman in the Collect Pond Park in lower Manhattan on Wednesday, in support of manslaughter defendant Daniel Penny of West Islip, drew a local group, some wearing Marine “leatherneck” jackets who arrived in specially hired buses.

They portray Penny as a good Samaritan who helped others restrain the late Jordan Neely from harassing other passengers on an F train. Blakeman played to veterans’ solidarity, at one point introducing a Vietnam veteran, Donald Steinert, whom he said was a friend of his in high school.

Then there was the other side. Perhaps 15 demonstrators who called for “Justice for Neely” held up signs across a barricade from the event, portraying the chokehold killing as an undeserved death penalty by a spontaneous judge and jury of a passenger-as-vigilante.

“Say his name,” said one protester. “The whole damn system is guilty as hell.”

On neither side did anyone at the park seem to be, as they say, “waiting for the facts to come in” before issuing a political verdict. That’s not what these rallies are for, after all.

During a news conference after the speeches, from behind Blakeman’s official county podium, one questioner persisted in asking just what the deceased had done to deserve his fate.

A Penny supporter who did not give his name afterward answered from the side that he’d heard Neely pushed a subway passenger on the platform the day before.

At least two arrests were reportedly made, but no details were immediately available by early afternoon. Some of the rowdier behavior included two T-shirted men, one smoking a blunt, challenging one or two of the team of police keeping the sides apart to fight him, with all the attendant anatomical references you might imagine. Police didn’t take the bait and the pair left after doing some more off-topic screaming.

Those arrested were believed taken to the 5th Precinct on Elizabeth Street in Chinatown where Penny had turned himself in to face the second-degree manslaughter charge, 12 days after the fatal incident that catapulted him reluctantly into headlines.

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com

Talking Point

Doctor's in

Catholic Health has cared for patients for nearly 100 years and runs some of the most familiar hospitals on Long Island. But in recent years, its innovative move to create several ambulatory care centers, located in the middle in both counties, reflects the changing state of our health care needs on Long Island.

We learned more from Catholic Health president and chief executive Dr. Patrick M. O'Shaughnessy and his team who visited Tuesday with the Newsday editorial board to explain how their faith-based approach fits into the general Long Island health care market. They say their ambulatory care approach, mirrored by other hospital networks on Long Island, can be an improvement for patients as well as health care providers.

Catholic Health serves about 20% of Long Island's health care demand. Some 83,000 patients are treated annually at Catholic Health acute care hospitals. That includes St. Charles in Port Jefferson, St. Joseph in Bethpage, good Samaritan University in West Islip, Mercy in Rockville Centre, St. Catherine of Siena in Smithtown, and St. Francis in Roslyn. In total at these hospitals, there are annually 24,500 inpatient surgeries, 5,500 coronary angioplasties, and 5,000 newborn deliveries, says Catholic Health’s leaders.

What particularly caught our eye is the 494,000 ambulatory outpatient visits and 64,000 ambulatory surgeries done primarily at Catholic Health's 16 multidisciplinary ambulatory centers in places like Ronkonkoma, Westbury, Woodbury and Commack. That stood out because they are located by design toward the center of the Island, where the population is greatest and where traditional facilities least dominate. Most of the legacy hospitals on Long Island tend to be closer to the north and south shores, places where the island first developed. Now Catholic Health’s ambulatory numbers dwarf those at their hospitals and are a significant change from the days of old.

O'Shaughnessy said this move to patients going to ambulatory care centers has taken some of the burden off busy hospital emergency rooms — roughly by 5 to 7%, he estimates. He said it was also an important response by Catholic Health, like other hospital groups, to the growing number of privately run urgent care centers that have popped up in the past decade. These urgent care facilities deal with everything from coughs and bad colds to being the first detectors of more serious illnesses like cancer or heart problems.

Despite its long history, Catholic Health faces plenty of competition for Long Island patients, many of them seniors. Along with the private urgent care centers, there's Northwell Health, the state's largest health provider, and further expansion and development in Long Island by well-known New York City hospitals such NYU Langone and Mount Sinai in recent years.                                                                                                                                  

— Thomas Maier thomas.maier@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Turbulence

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