No Indictment in Eric Garner Chokehold Case for N.Y.P.D. Officer

[moda0306]

People are killed by police hundreds of times per year. Most of the victims are white. Most blacks are killed by other blacks. Why is Obama fomenting this phony uproar along with his advisor Al Sharpton? What's up his sleeve? Now that he is a lame duck we'll see who he really is.

Yeah this is a phony uproar fomented by Obama.  Nobody really cares about a guy getting choked-out dead.  They just want to follow their "anointed one" to whatever he finds appalling.

As a conservative who supports police authority and lambasts those who doesn't, please, with respect (from me to you), show the slightest bit of humility when things don't work out to fit your world-view instead of trying to change the subject.

[Benko]

Why do you all think selling un-taxed cigarettes is not a crime worthy of punishment? Bootleg cigs cost the tax coffers plenty.

I wasn't suggesting people not paying taxes be let off the hook.  Find some other way to deal with them e.g. ATF or the IRS. 

[MachineGhost]

I wasn't suggesting people not paying taxes be let off the hook.  Find some other way to deal with them e.g. ATF or the IRS.

Wow, here comes another Waco or Ruby Ridge.  As bad as the Pigs are, they are vastly more preferable to Federal Agents.

[Reub]

Yes his death was terrible. And so are the deaths of the 93% of black people who are killed at the hands of other blacks.

Using a few terrible, isolated deaths to divide the country and gain political advantage from it is reprehensible. Obama's main man Al Sharpton has made a whole career out of it.

[MachineGhost]

Yes his death was terrible. And so are the deaths of the 93% of black people who are killed at the hands of other blacks.

Using a few terrible, isolated deaths to divide the country and gain political advantage from it is reprehensible. Obama's main man Al Sharpton has made a whole career out of it.

You forgot that other heellicker, Jesse Jackson!

The best thing I ever heard was from that town hall where a black woman said black people have just got to stop waiting for a black baby Jesus to appear and save them.  That is the core problem right there.

[Reub]

You mean that Obama's man Sharpton isn't the second coming?

[Pointedstick]

Why do you all think selling un-taxed cigarettes is not a crime worthy of punishment? Bootleg cigs cost the tax coffers plenty.

While I would hazard a guess that a good number of us are opposed to cigarette taxes and taxes in general, it's more about the method of enforcement, and obvious class/race disparities thereof. Because when you think about it, nearly everyone practices tax evasion. Do you report all cash gifts on your taxes? Do you report the monetary value of all barter transactions you make with friends? Etc.

I would hazard a guess that 100% of people who file taxes do these things, which are on paper illegal. But if the IRS finds out, do they send police officers to put you in a chokehold and arrest you? No, they send you a vaguely threatening letter in the mail and give you the opportunity to pay what they say you owe without having it escalate into a criminal manner at all. Somehow, the vast majority of tax evasion cases in the USA do not end with the tax evader handcuffed, gasping for breath, and dying on the sidewalk.

But that's not how it gets handled when poor black people practice the kind of street tax evasion that you would expect from their trashiness and poverty. Instead, the police are called and arrests are made. And in this case, the dude they tried to arrest wasn't even committing the crime they had accused him of.

[Pointedstick]

So you think that if the IRS had simply sent Garner a letter, he would have stopped bootlegging cigs, and also paid the taxes he de facto collected? 

Maybe yes, maybe no. If he didn't, then they could have involved the police. The point I'm making is that the overt instruments of state violence are deployed immediately in cases involving poor people, while wealthier people are given opportunities to "correct their mistakes" before the guns clear leather.

But that's not how it gets handled when poor black people practice the kind of street tax evasion that you would expect from their trashiness and poverty. Instead, the police are called and arrests are made.

Because sadly, there is currently no better solution, other than allowing it to continue.

It's a false choice, but if limited to the options of allowing tax evasion or murdering the tax evaders, I would certainly hope that most people would prefer the latter.

Again, a man was killed by the government here--killed for not even doing the thing he was accused of doing--a thing that probably all of us do on a regular basis without even realizing it. I see a fundamental injustice in that, regardless of your view of cigarette taxes.

[Pointedstick]

Because sadly, there is currently no better solution, other than allowing it to continue.

I can think of many alternatives. They could have written him a ticket. They could have imposed a fine. They could have reported his activity to the IRS or the city tax authority.

The real difference to me is that in arresting him (again, he didn't actually even do it!), they were demonstrating that they were more interested in punishing him than getting the money he was stiffing the city. With other, more "financial" forms of tax evasion, it's the opposite: the IRS just wants the money; they're not really very interested in whacking you unless there's no other choice.

[moda0306]

Because sadly, there is currently no better solution, other than allowing it to continue.

The real difference to me is that in arresting him (again, he didn't actually even do it!), they were demonstrating that they were more interested in punishing him than getting the money he was stiffing the city. With other, more "financial" forms of tax evasion, it's the opposite: the IRS just wants the money; they're not really very interested in whacking you unless there's no other choice.

I agree with what you are saying, but

I can think of many alternatives. They could have written him a ticket. They could have imposed a fine. They could have reported his activity to the IRS or the city tax authority.

what you propose as alternatives are not viable. The ticket would have been torn and discarded. The fine would have been ignored and remain unpaid. The IRS would not have any authority to do anything because he does not file a tax return. I'm not familiar with how the city tax authority operates, but my guess is that first they would need a court order to arrest him and then the police become involved anyway, only now they have to find him first.

I still think a simple [non-violent] arrest with a bail [in lieu of fine until court] required for release is the best solution.

How do you know all that?  Cuz he was a poor thug? 

So should police be in charge of determining whether someone is going to pay a fine and if not, arrest them?

[Pointedstick]

I agree with what you are saying, but

I can think of many alternatives. They could have written him a ticket. They could have imposed a fine. They could have reported his activity to the IRS or the city tax authority.

what you propose as alternatives are not viable. The ticket would have been torn and discarded. The fine would have been ignored and remain unpaid.

They can make a note of it and if he doesn't pay, then they can send him increasingly threatening letters, and then they can send out the cops. This isn't exactly rocket science...

Really, all I am advocating for is that a minimally-violent approach be taken when someone is discovered (not even discovered! suspected!) of not paying the taxes they are legally required to pay. There is no such thing as a non-violent arrest. People can get hurt. People can die--as Eric Garner did. Arresting someone as the first resort for a suspected tax infraction would seem barbaric if the government did it to everyone, but starts to look pretty racist when the government only does it to poor black people because their tax infraction involves cash on the street rather than non-disclosure of taxable transactions.

I'm not trying to say that Eric Garner was a model citizen. He had a long rap sheet. He had illegally sold untaxed cigarettes before. His demeanor spooked police officers. But I hope we can agree with less government violence being preferable to more. And that's the problem with what happened here: the officers of the state resorted to violence immediately rather than any of the less-violent alternatives that were or should have been available. And as a result, a man we now know was innocent is dead, and the people who killed him face no repercussions for it. That's a tragedy, and a completely preventable one had some restraint been used on the part of the police officers involved.

[moda0306]

How do you know all that?  Cuz he was a poor thug? 

So should police be in charge of determining whether someone is going to pay a fine and if not, arrest them?

Yeah you're right, he was an upstanding citizen and is likely to obey the law and pay his fine. 

No the police should not decide, the courts should, which is what I said. You get arrested, you post a cash retainer. If you show up for court and are found not guilty, you get your money refunded.

1) I didn't say he was an upstanding citizen.  You made assumptions about how he would handle the ticket based on subjective favors, and want the police to do the same. 

2) The police have to decide whether to arrest or not to even bring him before a court.  Normally, tax disputes are settled by a ticket/fine. Not an immediate arrest for suspected non-payment. You are calling for the police to make a very ubiquely aggressive decision (an arrest) based on the fact that you/they think he would ignore a ticket.

Perhaps the next time you get a speeding ticket, the police will seem you to be likely to not pay, and arrest you until your wife can come bail you out...

I hope you can see how ridiculous that principle would be in practice universally, for all sorts of fines.

[dualstow]

Why do you all think the grand jury came to the conclusion that they did?

[Reub]

I've served on grand juries in New York, hearing literally hundreds of cases. The notion that you can indict a ham sandwich is somewhat true, except when that ham sandwich comes in and talks to you face to face. This is what happened with both of the recent police killings. They came in and established a rapport, showed their humanity, and were voted no true bill. The fallacy that a defendant should never testify at a trial, especially at an indictment trial doesn't hold up. Grand jurors see very few such defendants and appreciate their attendance and testimony. In addition, I am fairly certain that a district attorney will usually take a kid glove approach when dealing with a police officer and, in Staten Island at least, the races of the people involved were also probably a factor.

[WiseOne]

I agree with what you are saying, but
what you propose as alternatives are not viable. The ticket would have been torn and discarded. The fine would have been ignored and remain unpaid.

They can make a note of it and if he doesn't pay, then they can send him increasingly threatening letters, and then they can send out the cops. This isn't exactly rocket science...

Sorry, but this is fantasy. You are confusing the actions a law abiding citizen like you or I might take vs a criminal, who would likely laugh at such letters.

I must say I'm a bit puzzled by this sentiment.  How would you propose that police officers classify people as "law-abiding" vs "criminal"?  Personally I think this is very, very dangerous ground.

I do have sympathy for this sentiment, having lived in a high crime area at one time.  It certainly felt as though I were surrounded by a "criminal-class" population.  But I'd never expect that to be a basis for selective law enforcement actions.

[MachineGhost]

I am not opposed to taxes in general, just to the ridiculous amount of taxes and the insane complexity of the tax code. I happen to think cigarette taxes should be higher, but uniform across all jurisdictions. If the tax was the same everywhere, there would be less incentive to buy them where they are cheap and transport them to where they are expensive to bootleg them. If the tax was higher, eventually less people would smoke, and a horrible public health cost would decline.

That's the ideal, but it didn't work out so well during Prohibition with all the gangster bootlegging from Canada that eventually brought us Formula One racing.  I think NY even shares a border with Canada!  Easy peasy.  There's a sweet spot between maximizing cessation and minimizing evasion, but I have zero confidence politicians and bureaucrats know where that is.  They're not that smart.  And if the increased revenue from the increased taxes just go to shore up increased border interdiction against increased bootleggers, it'll become another expensive endless boondoggle like the "War on Drugs".

What we really ought to do is just ostracize all smokers and illicit drug users out of society.  Let them have their own private island and do as they see fit to themselves and others.  That might wipe out half of Hollywood, though!  Hey, I know who we can call!

Because sadly, there is currently no better solution, other than allowing it to continue.

The solution is called leadership.  You can hear a pin drop.

[MachineGhost]

Maybe. But in order for it to become a profitable criminal enterprise, the crooks would have to figure out a way to not only smuggle it in, but sell it for less than the legal taxed outlets. The likelihood of that occurring is slim. The current problem stems from varying taxes across local jurisdictions.

I think you're overlooking that local jurisdictions once harmonized will soon expand to allow gangs to arbitrage international jurisdictions.  Lets take Amsterdam and Portugal for example.  They are drug tourist magnets for all countries in Europe.  So will Colorado and Washington soon unless we roll out the legalization rapidly to the rest of the 48 states and then we'll have Canadian and Mexican drug tourism.  When does it end?  We're not ready for a global government yet.

I don't think you realize how absurd cigaratte taxes are.  A single pack costs like $30 here in CA.  There's a huge room for profit.  You can as simply just buy them on various Native American reservations or military bases tax-free for reselling without having to worry about international borders.

[flyingpylon]

That's the ideal, but it didn't work out so well during Prohibition with all the gangster bootlegging from Canada that eventually brought us Formula One racing.

Huh?  I think you mean NASCAR (stock car racing).

[WiseOne]

I don't see why handing out a citation isn't a good solution.  Have you ever gotten a parking ticket?  It says on there that if you don't pay the fine by the time specified you are subject to further penalties.  If you let these things go long enough there will eventually be an arrest warrant issued. 

I don't know offhand whether selling bootlegged cigarettes is a felony (due to our bizarre drug laws), but it shouldn't be and thus should be treated more like a parking ticket than a mugging.  And that the above procedure should be applied to everyone regardless of race, class, income, body mass index etc.  Maybe I did misunderstand but it sounded to me like several of the posts were suggesting the opposite.

Actually it's quite an interesting question:  at what point does an offense require that someone be immediately hauled off to jail as opposed to given a citation?  I can't believe it's a matter of police preference, or dependent on any of the above variables.

[dualstow]

That's the ideal, but it didn't work out so well during Prohibition with all the gangster bootlegging from Canada that eventually brought us Formula One racing.

Huh?  I think you mean NASCAR (stock car racing).

I saw that in a program on the history of whiskey! Yeah, NASCAR.

Well, I just read a lengthy article in the Washington Post about the Michael Brown case, and it is so clear that Officer Wilson acted in self-defense. But look at all the people around the country who want to sweep the facts aside and see him indicted because of a (very real) problem with oppression by abusive and trigger happy cops.

Even on this forum, there's a lot of this: "I didn't really read the details, and I don't know the case, but it seems like blah blah blah." Looking forward to getting to the bottom of the Eric Garner case soon.

[dualstow]

How would you propose that police officers classify people as "law-abiding" vs "criminal"?  Personally I think this is very, very dangerous ground.

I would think the answer to that is very straightforward: a criminal record, or lack thereof. Did Eric Garner have a long rap sheet? Or none at all?

[Pointedstick]

How would you propose that police officers classify people as "law-abiding" vs "criminal"?  Personally I think this is very, very dangerous ground.

I would think the answer to that is very straightforward: a criminal record, or lack thereof. Did Eric Garner have a long rap sheet? Or none at all?

He had a long rap sheet, going back 30 years. However, none of his crimes were particularly awful. I think the worst one were grand larceny and assault (could be shoplifting and bar-fighting; the kinds of things that a lot of trashy poor people do). Most convictions were things like driving without a license, possession of marijuana, and several for selling untaxed cigarettes. So like I said, he was no model citizen, but it didn't sound like he was a hardened thug--just a typical example of the worse side of trashy poor people. But from what I saw in the video, nothing he did on the day he was killed merited the extremely violent response in arresting him for a crime that, again, it turned out he didn't actually commit. And he was known to police. There's an allusion to that in the video where Garner claims that police are always hassling him. It seems pretty obvious that the police had pigeonholed him as someone who was chronically "up to no good" and were looking for an opportunity to bust him again.

Honestly, my TL;DR version of this is that police decided to rough up and arrest a known minor street criminal for a crime they suspected him of primarily due to his prior record of doing it, but accidentally killed him in the process due to some shady tactics that most of the time they get away with because nobody dies.

[MachineGhost]

You need to stop buying your cigs at Whole Foods. According to this August 2014 survey, CA doesn't even rank in the top 30 states by cost per pack at under $6. Maybe in LA it's higher due to local taxes, which makes the problem worse. But what you will notice is that the cost per pack between the highest and lowest states is more than double. That makes me angry, and I don't even smoke!

I don't smoke anymore, so I guess I'm out of the loop.  But that is around the price I see on outdoor signs for a pack at gas stations or convenience stores.  Maybe it's just sloppy advertising and they really mean a carton with a discount.  $7 per pack (4 years ago) * 10 = $70.  Still doesn't add up, but whatever.

Are you angry because there's a black market arbitrage opportunity or are you angry because the lower-cost states aren't disincentivizing smoking enough?  How strong is the evidence that sin taxes actually reduce smoking?  We're talking about a highly addictive soft drug here where the "War on Drugs" doesn't even work for harder drugs.

[Pointedstick]

While I think we all agree that the cops went overboard and there should have been consequences, I just don't get why you are trying to make this guy out to be less evil and worthless than he was. Plenty of poor trashy people are law-abiding citizens let alone have 30 year rap sheets, and the fact that most of his crimes were petty doesn't make him any less of a scourge. No, he wasn't a murderer, but he did commit at least 2 felonies. Did he deserve to die at the hands of overzealous police? Of course not. But let's not pretend he was in any way a contribution to society.

"Evil…" "worthless…" "scourge…" not a contributor to society… If I could hazard a guess, I would estimate that our different perceptions entirely hinge on how we see the victim. You appear to be of the school of thought that he was basically a worthless person whose death isn't really worthy of mustering any moral outrage. I totally see where you're coming from, but I can't feel the emotions you're feeling. We don't know anything else about this man. Maybe he was a wonderful husband and father. Unlike most black men, for example, he managed to stay married to his wife. People said he was a neighborhood peacemaker. Maybe that was true. Maybe he baked a darn good apple pie. I won't say that I know any of this, but I can't just make a value judgement that his life was worthless and his death is no great loss for humanity.

It's one thing when a person is killed in self-defense; we ignore all the possible good things about them because their killing was justified, however tragic. But when there is an unjustified killing--in other words, a crime--it seems totally inappropriate to me to go judging the victim to fish for reasons why his death isn't really that bad. Unjustified killing is criminal killing. Even shady dudes with criminal records have a right to life unless they throw it away by attacking someone innocent. In this case, the person who did that was not Eric Garner but rather the police officers who arrested him.

[Pointedstick]

I don't disagree with anything you said in this post. What I disagree with is your minimization of his prior transgressions with the law. I never his death was not worthy of moral outrage.

I am minimizing them because they in no way offer any justifications for his death. This is in contrast to someone like Michael brown, for example, whose prior criminal transgression 10 minutes earlier was the instigating event for coming to the attention of a police officer. If Eric Brown committed assault or larceny last year or 30 years ago, those crimes in no way permitted police officers to behave the way they did.