Plan B Forum

Because this case is so outrageous, I'm going to quote the outrageous and outraged Wonkette version (motto: "Nasty Vile Little Snark Mob") of this story rather than some more mainstream, "objective" news source. Sometimes a story just seems to DEMAND this level of outrage:

Today is a day ending in “y,” so a grand jury in America declined to indict a police officer in the death of an unarmed black man. No, not that one. Or that one. This one.

A Staten Island grand jury has voted not to bring criminal charges against the white New York City police officer at the center of the Eric Garner case, a person briefed on the matter said Wednesday.

To refresh your memory, Eric Garner was a black man selling loose cigarettes on a Staten Island street corner back in July. The New York Police Department wanted to bust him, because selling untaxed cigarettes one or two at a time to addicts who perhaps don’t have ten bucks for an entire pack at the nearest bodega is the greatest threat to NYC since Osama bin Laden first heard about the World Trade Center. In the course of the arrest, one cop put Garner in a chokehold and rode him to the ground while Garner struggled and cried, “I can’t breathe!”

There isn’t even any debate about the facts of the case the way there is in Ferguson with competing eyewitness statements. The entire New York incident was caught on video. You can hear Garner hollering over and over that he can’t breathe. The New York City coroner ruled Garner’s death a homicide due to “compression of neck (chokehold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.” To top it off, the NYPD outlawed chokeholds in 1993 and had not trained new recruits in the maneuver for ten years before that because so many suspects around the country had died when over-caffeinated cops had taken out their 50 Shades of Grey fantasies on them.

Maybe that’s the problem: The officer in the Garner case, one Daniel Pantaleo, hadn’t been trained in how to properly choke out a suspect. Someone get Jason Bourne over there, stat.

We’re not sure why we’re even surprised that video evidence wasn’t enough to return an indictment. After all, the grand jury was empanelled on Staten Island, the borough that just overwhelmingly re-elected this asshole to represent it in Congress.

This comes on top of President Obama announcing he would seek funds to outfit cops across the country with body cameras to hopefully try to prevent another Ferguson situation. Wingnuts are opposed because any money Obama wants to spend is bad and shouldn’t we be putting cameras on criminals instead? Meanwhile, liberals have been wondering if cops wearing cameras would make any difference. Now we know the answer.

Link to Wonkette story:
http://wonkette.com/568173/grand-jury-l ... s-terrible

First video:


Second video:


ETA: Section 125.15 of New York’s penal code:
“A person is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree when:
1. He recklessly causes the death of another person.”

....I did not read the article, but I agree that the policeman had no need to slap a chief jay strongbow sleeper hold on that guy. ridiculous.

sure looked like un necessary brutality to me...

....move along buddy. that would have been the proper response to the victim s minor infraction

Eric Garner's last words before he was murdered.

yrs,
rubato

I know if this was my discipline case, and an officer used an illegal hold, he or she would be disciplined. Where it resulted in death or any kind of bodily harm, there is no question the Chiefs I advise would refer to the case to the ADA for prosecution, and I'd hope the ADA would prosecute. At the end of the day, there is a very good chance the officer would be subject to criminal sanctions (of course, how that plays out is always up to the jury), and undergoes a process to be terminated from his or her position.

Which brings me to this article in the Atlantic:

http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archi ... et/383258/

When Frank Serpico, the most famous police whistleblower of his generation, reflected on years of law-enforcement corruption in the New York Police Department, he assigned substantial blame to a commissioner who failed to hold rank-and-file cops accountable. That's the classic template for police abuse: misbehaving cops are spared punishment by colleagues and bosses who cover for them.

There are, of course, police officers who are fired for egregious misbehavior by commanding officers who decide that a given abuse makes them unfit for a badge and gun. Yet all over the U.S., police unions help many of those cops to get their jobs back, often via secretive appeals geared to protect labor rights rather than public safety. Cops deemed unqualified by their own bosses are put back on the streets. Their colleagues get the message that police all but impervious to termination.

That isn't to say that every officer who is fired deserves it, or that every reinstated cop represents a miscarriage of justice. In theory, due process before a neutral arbiter could even protect blue whistleblowers from wrongful termination. But in practice, too many cops who needlessly kill people, use excessive force, or otherwise abuse their authority are getting reprieves from termination.

Too often arbitrators *are* afraid to uphold termination or other disciplinary decisions, and there is very little chance of getting an arbitrator's decision overturned in court. Something needs to change.

But oh hey wait a second - the grand jury system is unassailable and always gets to the truth!


How does that go?

Justice = 'Just us' [white folk]

Yep, this case is pretty infuriating; I cannot see any justification for the officer's actions, nor for the grand jury's findings.

Well, let's look at the facts: Eric Garner was selling loose cigarettes, and Michael Brown had swiped some cigars. I think I see the problem here . . . .

I blame Obama.

Government health advisory on every black person?

Well. They've been telling us for almost half a century that smoking kills.....

MajGenl.Meade wrote:Government health advisory on every black person?

"WARNING: Being black is hazardous to your health, especially around police."

You know anti smoking policy has been a favored agenda policy of the left......

There's obviously a day and night difference between this case and the one in Feguson...it's not apples and oranges, it's apples and washing machines....(one of the unfortunate aspects to these things...cop involved deaths of minority suspects... is the way many tend to lump them altogether regardless of the facts.)

The one and only thing these two cases have in common is that in both, all the relevant facts are publicly known and crystal clear:

In the Ferguson case, the physical evidence was exculpatory to the point of being exonerating. It was the equivalent of an iron clad alibi. There was clearly no probable cause to believe that Wilson had committed a crime of any sort under Missouri law, and thus no indictment was returned. Justice triumphed in that case.

This seems not to be true in this case. But like in Ferguson the facts appear clear:

The New York City coroner ruled Garner’s death a homicide due to “compression of neck (chokehold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.” To top it off, the NYPD outlawed chokeholds in 1993 and had not trained new recruits in the maneuver for ten years before that

That looks pretty cut and dry to me. A police officer used a form of force that he was specifically prohibited from using, had no training for, and as a result a person died. None of that appears to be disputed, and it's been confirmed by the coroner.

I don't know if that's first degree murder, and I'm certainly no expert on the relevant statutes under New York law, but that sure looks like some sort of a crime to me. In any event way more than the bar of probable cause would require.

If it's not a crime to do what this guy did then it certainly should be and there's something in New York law in serious need of fixing.

It could all have been sorted without death if the guy had agreed to be handcuffed.

That's like blaming a wife for causing her husband to hit her....

It could all have been sorted without death if the guy had agreed to be handcuffed.

That's certainly a valid point, but even if someone is resisting arrest there are appropriate and legal means for police officers to use to deal with the situation, and there are inappropriate and illegal ways to deal with it.

This appears to be the latter to me, (though once again I ad the caveat that I don't know what the New York law says)

Joe Guy wrote:That's like blaming a wife for causing her husband to hit her....

Not entirely, but yes to a degree.

If he had respected the law, he would have allowed himself to be handcuffed, and faced up to the charges.

I'm not exonerating the cops, what they did was lethal and illegal.

But the start point for the debacle and death was this (huge) bloke's illegal act, and refusal to be lawfully detained.

I'm with the majority on this. There is a death by unnatural causes involved. The police cannot be blamed for using reasonable force to subdue a belligerent (and really big) person who is resisting. But it appears that the chokehold was unreasonable (and perhaps illegal) force, albeit used without intent to cause harm. A court should determine that.

It should be noted that a person saying "I can't breathe" repeatedly is in fact breathing. In a true chokehold both breathe and words would be cut off. His ability to breathe was restricted by the hold around the neck, the weight of officer(s) against his chest AND the position he was in, prone. These things brought about his particular death. But I'm unclear on the actual cause of death - not suffocation presumably nor strangulation. Perhaps if it had been somebody fitter or with a different medical history the outcome would not have been so tragic.

For the record, I think it's also pretty much a bullshit crime that was involved that triggered all of this...

If the NYPD has the time to run around nailing poor shleps trying to earn a few cents selling loose cigarettes, it seems to me that they have way too much time on their hands...

Though I suppose the counter argument would be that it's possible that somebody doing this might be a sicko who was lacing the cigarettes with rat poison or something worse....Afterall, this is New York City...

And I can see some merit to that view...

Not true meade you can speak as long as there is air (not necessarily oxygen) in your lungs that you can expell.

Especially in a chokehold which prohibits the reuptake of air.

The tragic irony here is the attempts to alert the cop to his peril likly sped up his demise.

Now three edits in to one post Jim and Meade should be proud.

Joe Guy wrote:That's like blaming a wife for causing her husband to hit her....

I'm not sure that's the best possible analogy...

The relationship between a husband and a wife is different from the relationship between a police officer and a member of the public who is suspected of committing a crime...

A wife has no legal obligation to obey her husband, (at least in Western societies) whereas a member of the public does have such a legal obligation vis a vis a police officer under many circumstances, including this one...

But again, that does not in any way shape or form excuse what this police officer did. There are right ways and wrong ways to handle somebody resisting arrest.

ETA:

It looks like we're pretty much all in agreement that what happened in this case was wrong. (At least based on what everyone has posted so far.)

Is there anyone who feels differently? Anyone who believes the officer's actions were proper and that he should not be held legally responsible? I would be interested in seeing the reasoning behind that point of view.

It's too bad Dave's not around; we might get a completely different perspective...