Of course they did. Do you think Garner would be alive or dead today if the police hadn’t “restrained” him with a chokehold whose use is banned by the NYPD?
I do not understand all this sidestepping that he really died because he is out of shape or a “fat fuck” or asthma or whatever. Do you think any of that would matter if I choked you? Do you think if I choked you to the point you had a heart attack that my defense could reasonably be that you’re a fat ass so it’s not really my fault (not saying you are, just pretending for the sake of argument)?
Hell, you could have a terminal, inoperable lung cancer and have been given a week to live and it will still be murder if I choke you to the point that your weakened body succumbed. It doesn’t matter that your condition made you more susceptible.
Even the coroner called it murder.
No matter how you slice it that cop killed Garner. If the cop hadn’t done that Garner would almost certainly be alive today. Apparently some people think that’s ok. I don’t.
It’s illuminating to contrast the thought of progressives – those of us who support humanity – with that of right-wingers. No matter how odious governance may be, dunces like Bricker and Smapti are eager to blame “the people” for failures in our “democracy,” when it suits them.
[sarcasm]Yes, New Yorkers went to the polls and asked the NYPD to murder anyone selling loosies. And the 'people think 17,000 pages of fdederal crimes aren’t enough; we want another 5000 pages.[/sarcasm]
“Democratic process”? What incompetent thought! What do you guys think of the “purple finger” shams in Iraqistan, Bricki_Smapt?
Welcome to Ameriqistan. War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.
Yes, you quoted the New York Daily news , which dumbed down the actual ruling which was “On August 1, Garner’s death was found by the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office to be a result of “compression of neck (chokehold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.”[24] Asthma, heart disease, and obesity were cited as contributing factors.”
And if a cop kills a suspect while that suspect is in the middle of gunning down a whole busload of orphans it’s still “homicide”.
ALL of the cop apologists, here and in the media, etc., are consistently making one major (and deliberate?) blunder in their arguments w.r.t. Garner: Insisting that the choke-hold (or whatever you want to call it) didn’t kill him; that Garner’s own infirmities did. And I haven’t seen anyone calling them out on it yet, either; neither here nor anywhere else.
You’re forgetting or overlooking or ignoring (and don’t try to tell me you aren’t aware of) the thin skull principle or “you takes 'em [the victim] as you finds 'em”.
Let’s not hear any more of idiotic “the cops didn’t kill him, his asthma did” argument. That’s just arrant nonsense, up with which we need not put. (Whether it’s murder or manslaughter or merely homicide is a separate argument.)
(Ye gods, have I posted something cogent in a Pit thread? May the Mods forgive me.)
On Aug. 1, a New York City medical examiner determined that the cause of death in the Garner case was “homicide,” specifically the neck compressions from the Pantaleo’s chokehold and “the compression of [Garner’s] chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police,” according to spokeswoman, Julie Bolcer.
But “homicide” in this context doesn’t mean what you think. It’s one of five categories medical examiners use to label causes of death and it indicates that “someone’s intentional actions led to the death of another person,” says Gregory G. Davis, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners. The other four labels are suicide, accident, natural, and undetermined, Davis says.
So in a medical examiner’s report “homicide” just means one person intentionally did something that led to the death of someone else. It doesn’t mean the death was intentional and it doesn’t mean it was a crime.
A combinations of things and a string of bad decisions and errors caused his death.
If he had not been a career (mostly petty) criminal with some 30 arrests- not dead.
if he had accepted being handcuffed as had occurred many times before- no death.
and so forth.
Yes, one of the main causes was the way the police restrained him. Necessary? Maybe. Perhaps not. He was a huge guy, with a history of violent crime. He was known to the officers. He was resisting arrest. He was out on bail.
But they did not intend to kill him. There didnt appear to be any racist motives (“The arrest was supervised by NYPD Sargeant Kizzy Adoni, a female African American, who did not intercede.”)
Certainly a error, and one that caused a death. But a error in the line of duty. And one error in a chain of tragic errors, including several by the Garner.
The cops intentionally put him into a choke-hold. The choke-hold and associated compressions to his neck and chest resulted in his death. In plain English, they killed him. Presumably they accidentally killed him, but they killed him nonetheless. How is this fact controversial?
Why are you bringing it up? People bring it up as it’s semantically loaded and full of bad connotations.
You could just as well say he caused his own death by resisting arrest. It was a chain of events. Each link in the chain led to the next. You cant fairly blame one link as the sole cause.
This case has many “facts”. Garner was a violent criminal out on bail. He was committing a crime. This caused a arrest. He resisted a peaceful arrest. This caused a take down by a police officer. The take down caused him to choke due to medical conditions. The choking caused his death.
Many* facts*, many causes.
Not saying the police were without error here. But I cant see anything they did which was criminal.
Simple - I watched the video. He’s in a chokehold for a few seconds (7?) - the time it takes to get him on the ground. Once he’s on the ground, the chokehold is released. That is when he is placed prone on the ground and starts saying that he can’t breathe. Since the coroner report could find no damage to his neck, once the chokehold was taken off, it wasn’t the chokehold that made him feel like he can’t breathe. It was the prone positioning (which you didn’t mention, but that is what the coroner’s report says) combined with his obesity and asthma.
The simple fact is that there is no chokehold on the man when he is complaining about his breath, and there was no damage to his neck that the chokehold caused.
In plain English, yes they killed him. Yet I can see how it could not be considered a crime. People who are outraged seem to somehow believe that every time someone is killed, it just MUST be a crime. That is not true.
It may not be a crime but it is intentional. What the officer did to Garner was intentional without doubt, it was against NYPD policy and it was the proximate cause of Garner’s death. Coroner says so.
Was the officer justified? Some here like you think he was. I submit he wasn’t. What exactly was Garner going to do to resist arrest if the police just stood there and waited a few seconds for him to chill out? As you and others point out Garner was woefully out of shape. Was he going to run? Was he going to hurt others? No and no.
Apparently for you though police overreaction is just fine with the slightest provocation. I’d rather not live in your world.
Well, at least you’re not claiming that the coroner says it was murder anymore.
The action was intentional. The death wasn’t. And no, it was not “the proximate cause”. It was one of three, from coroner’s report, one of which was “prone positioning”. Why are you not complaining that Garner was “prone positioned to death”?
Yes, I guess in an Alan Watts sort of way, there’s not really any such thing as a “discrete” event, is there? I mean, you could just as well say that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was really more of a compound event… without the going to the theater, no assassination, right? It was a chain of events. No one link as the sole cause.
Scenario 1: A man is arrested by police and taken to the precinct. While in the holding cell, he is generously offered a ham sandwich, on which he chokes and dies. He died in police custody and would probably not have died had he not been in police custody. However, the police plainly didn’t kill him.
Scenario 2: A man is arrested by police using methods of such force that he is killed in the process. In plain English, the police inadvertently kill the man in the process of arresting him.
It’s relevant to a discussion of the Eric Garner case whether his was more like Scenario 1 or more like Scenario 2. Sorry if you think a plain English description of what occurred has bad connotations. Are you starting to see what the fuss is about?