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

[Pointedstick]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/nyreg ... arner.html

Unlike what happened in Ferguson, the outcome here is completely incomprehensible to me. There is clear video of an officer choking him out while he's gasping, "I can't breathe!" and then him and his colleagues poking and prodding his body for several minutes, with no resuscitation attempted. More protecting and serving...

[Reub]

My question is wasn't Obama supposed to unite us all and turn this into a post-racial
country (along with parting the seas)? Six years in and it seems to be getting even worse.

[Pointedstick]

It certainly does.

[MachineGhost]

He was 43 frackin' years old!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  At what point does the brutality by the Pigs stop???

[dragoncar]

My question is wasn't Obama supposed to unite us all and turn this into a post-racial
country (along with parting the seas)? Six years in and it seems to be getting even worse.

Get out of here with your ridiculous logical fallacies

[Reub]

I'll go quietly and leave the healing work to Obama's #1 man.....Al Sharpton.

[Ad Orientem]

Deeply disturbing.

[dualstow]

On the radio this morning, I heard them discussing the various holds that are called "chokeholds", including the vascular hold that makes a person pass out but which does not cut off breathing. Interesting. Not sure which hold was used.

[Pointedstick]

The uh, one that kills you, apparently.

[WiseOne]

Agree with PointedStick, this decision is really shocking.  The video clearly shows the guy was not being violent.  It looked like he was arguing with the police, but he had his hands up and was saying "Don't touch me!" when he was tackled.  Pretty sure that arguing with cops without any overt physical threats shouldn't be a death sentence.

After the decision there was quite a scene in the streets, I got to watch one of the demonstrations.  Traffic was totally stopped, there were dozens of police cars and apparently they were out in riot gear as well.  There was also a notable "What the f--k??" reaction from a range of politicians including Eric Holder, Obama, and the NYC mayor - didn't detect that in the Ferguson case.

Al Sharpton, as much as I hate to say this, raised a really good point.  The prosecutor has an inherent conflict of interest because he/she works with the police regularly.  The same may be true of the judge.  We don't know exactly why the grand jury reached its decision and I hope to hear more about it, but these cases really should be tried somewhere other than the home jurisdiction.

As another aside...based on this decision I'd say police body cameras are going to be a total waste of money.

[flyingpylon]

The uh, one that kills you, apparently.

Not necessarily.  It's quite possible that an aggressive, legal hold was used that would have been fine in most circumstances but when combined with Garner's extremely poor physical condition, caused his death.

I haven't seen all of the evidence (or any, really) and don't claim to know that's what happened.  But as usual, I suspect the story may be more complicated than the public is being led to believe. 

[Pointedstick]

The uh, one that kills you, apparently.

Not necessarily.  It's quite possible that an aggressive, legal hold was used that would have been fine in most circumstances but when combined with Garner's extremely poor physical condition, caused his death.

Well, so 1) I have a lawyer friend who practices in NYC who says that that kind of chokehold is illegal for the police to perform, and 2) even if it was a legal hold that killed him, if there was no reason at all to attack him in the first place, then his death is murder. The police both initiated and escalated the confrontation. There's video of the event as well as the lead-up to it.

I haven't seen all of the evidence (or any, really) and don't claim to know that's what happened.  But as usual, I suspect the story may be more complicated than the public is being led to believe.

Ordinarily, I might agree, but again, there's video of the entire incident. you can judge for yourself. This man was in no way violent.

[WiseOne]

Not only that, but you might recall that the victim said repeatedly "I can't breathe", then after about 10 repetitions stopped talking.  If you can talk, then you have some airflow, but if your airway is completely cut off then you can't talk. So he was partially obstructed initially, then the chokehold was tightened while he was on the ground being tackled by several officers simultaneously.

No matter what else was going on, I find this impossible to rationalize away.

[Tyler]

I haven't seen all of the evidence (or any, really) and don't claim to know that's what happened.  But as usual, I suspect the story may be more complicated than the public is being led to believe.

Ordinarily, I might agree, but again, there's video of the entire incident. you can judge for yourself. This man was in no way violent.

+1

If the cops broke no laws in this incident, then the laws need to be rewritten.  What happened is completely wrong on so many levels.

[flyingpylon]

Not only that, but you might recall that the victim said repeatedly "I can't breathe", then after about 10 repetitions stopped talking.  If you can talk, then you have some airflow, but if your airway is completely cut off then you can't talk. So he was partially obstructed initially, then the chokehold was tightened while he was on the ground being tackled by several officers simultaneously.

No matter what else was going on, I find this impossible to rationalize away.

In the video that I saw, it appears that the hold is released at the same time or just after the first time Garner says he can't breathe. Granted, the cop that put the hold on him still has Garner's head pushed into the concrete which I'm sure did not help, but it doesn't appear that he tightened the hold after Garner said he couldn't breathe.

But either way, I'm not trying to defend the cops at all.  What we see on the video is clearly out of line with the stated offense and Garner's actions on this video.  What most people don't know is what other factors (prior crimes, violence, history between the two, etc.) may have precipitated such aggressive actions from the cops (prior baggage, as it were).  Maybe there was absolutely nothing and the cop is just a bad cop.  I'm just saying we don't really know.  Or maybe it's just me that doesn't know (it happens).  Perhaps more will be known in the future.

[Pointedstick]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/a ... ice-stance

A city medical examiner found that the 43-year-old Garner was killed by neck compression from the chokehold along with “the compression of his chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police”?. Asthma, heart disease and obesity were contributing factors.

Better hope you're in perfect health if the police decide to choke you and hold you down on your belly.

However, in the interests of full disclosure, Garner had a ridiculously long rap sheet, including things like assault and grand larceny. Lots of minor things like driving without a license, possession of marijuana, and selling untaxed cigarettes (:o WTF is wrong with you New York?).

In the interests of even more full disclosure, the officer who killed Garner was already the subject of two civil rights lawsuits in which people accused him of falsely arresting and sexually abusing them; in one incident, he forced two black men at gunpoint to strip naked in public so he could strip-search them for stolen goods (none were found and the men were allowed to leave).

What a mess. What's wrong with people in this country? Is is really that difficult to follow the stupid rules that govern daily life, to avoid attacking people or stealing their property, and to avoid sexually abusing or murdering people you are in a position of power over???

[dualstow]

Where's the best video link? I keep finding news reports with too-brief clips of the actual incident.

[Pointedstick]

Where's the best video link? I keep finding news reports with too-brief clips of the actual incident.

Here's one that shows the build-up:

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/sta ... -1.1871486


I'll get serious and honest and impartial here for a bit. There are so many things wrong that I want to mention:

1. The crime of "selling untaxed cigarettes." Whether or not Garner was guilty of this grievous offense, it's a ridiculous crime. Laws like this empower the police to more or less arrest anyone, they fray relations between the police and community, and they pull officers off their real jobs of apprehending people who are actually dangerous.

2. Garner had a history with police and a lengthy rap sheet including a conviction for the same crime he was accused of on the day he died. Repeatedly getting caught and jailed for breaking the law is a terrible way to avoid getting killed by the police. As a result, the police had likely pigeonholed him as a career criminal who was "probably up to no good" even if he really was innocent of anything on that day. His known history had them primed to take him down.

3. Police chokeholds in NYC were apparently banned by law in 1993, but there appears to be zero enforcement of this policy (big surprise).

4. Lawful arrest procedure apparently permits multiple officers to sit on an arrestee's back and head for minutes at a time. The medical examiner concluded that these tactics, along with the illegal chokehold and his medical issues, caused Garner's inability to breathe and ultimate death.

5. Once Garner stopped moving, no attempt was made to resuscitate him. Nobody cared about his health once they had clearly injured him. Why bother? He's a thug. Just another dead goblin, right?

5. A grand jury is a kangaroo court. There is no judge, no defense, no right to present opposing evidence or testimonies, and no public record of the proceedings. It's basically the prosecutor's playground.

6. Having prosecutors try police officers is a clear conflict of interest. Prosecutors and police officers are colleagues. There is a strong social motivation for each to keep their relationship with the other strong, and prosecutors may rightly fear hostility and political fallout if they indict and convict police officers of crimes. Now, while having agents of the state try one another in any context is a conflict of interest, at least in some cases the two parties' interests are opposed, and a judge may be eager to deliver a political bruising to rivals. Not so here.

[dualstow]

Thank you for the link.
Eesh. That looks bad. And indefensible.

[Reub]

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.

[stuper1]

Reub,

Do you remember the movie scene where Luke finds out that Darth Vader is his dad?  Every time you post some irrelevant comment about Obama, I picture you having a DNA test and finding out that Obama is yours.

[Reub]

I've had my DNA tested and he is not my father....just a distant relative from Kenya.

But seriously, how can a sitting President meet with a racial huckster like Al Sharpton more than 80 times and be expected to be taken seriously? Do you know, as reported by the NY Times, that Obama secretly met with Ferguson community organizers the day after the midterm elections on November 5th and encouraged them to "stay the course"? We all saw what happened after that. Why did he do that? This is part of his real agenda. Racial huckstering and division are his tactics, not mine. Now that he doesn't care about the electorate anymore the real Obama is coming to the surface. And he is involved in this up to his pretty little ears. Unfortunately he isn't done by a mile.

[Benko]

On a more basic level, is sending police to arrest people for selling cigarettes without tax an appropriate use of the police?  Given that I'm sure there must be higher priorities for police in magor cities.

Which is not meant to excuse the police for behaving badly. 

[Kriegsspiel]

On a more basic level, is sending police to arrest people for selling cigarettes without tax an appropriate use of the police?  Given that I'm sure there must be higher priorities for police in magor cities.

Which is not meant to excuse the police for behaving badly.

Right, no matter what the police's mission is at any time, they can't jack it up like they did here and not have any consequences. And, shit, they didn't just behave badly, they fucking killed a dude because they were too brutal. Of course, they will be made out to be racists, since that is the media's eyeballs-on-the-screen slant.. what happened was just wrong whether done to any race, and there should be consequences for it.

[dragoncar]

Reub,

Do you remember the movie scene where Luke finds out that Darth Vader is his dad?  Every time you post some irrelevant comment about Obama, I picture you having a DNA test and finding out that Obama is yours.

This is by far the most polite "Obama banged your mom" comment I've ever seen.