And those handcuffs were magical and could not be undone once closed.
No u
And other witnesses say that he wasn’t.
I don’t recall Martin Luther King telling the crowd in Washington to “burn this bitch down”.
An “Occupy” terrorist is a creature similar to an Unitarian fanatic.
That odd. Your link doesn’t lead to a coroner’s report.
Is that the opinion of the Daily News reporters, Barry Paddock, Rocco Parascandola, and Corky Siemaszko, as to the cause of death or are they practicing cut-and-paste journalism? Has the actual coroners report been made public yet?
According to the alleged opinions of Paddock, Parascandola, and Siemaszko (Oh, my!) -
*The Staten Island district attorney’s office said they had been in touch with the medical examiner.
“We await the issuance of the official death certificate and the autopsy report,” an office statement read. “The investigation into Mr. Garner’s death continues.”
The autopsy determined the victim’s asthma, obesity and high blood pressure were also contributing factors in his death. *
From the same link story you posted.
(post shortened)
Maybe people are being instructed to focus outrage on the choke hold??? Or maybe it’s a personal choice to focus outrage on the choke hold???
Garner had a lot of existing medical problems. Garner knew the arrest procedure. He’d been arrested often enough. Garner knew he was in poor health. Garner’s decision to resist arrest doesn’t make any sense, and yet, that’s what he chose to do.
When one person says a bad thing, that makes all the protesters terrorists? In all likelihood, at some point during the Civil Rights protests, someone said something bad.
The reason the choke hold is focused on is because its use by NYPD officers had been explicitly forbidden for a number of years.
The reason for outrage in general is because police offices are killing large numbers of people. Black people. Unarmed black people.
Screw the ever-ready extenuating circumstances. Stop the killing.
Did you forget to mention that people of other skin colors are also being killed when attacking police officers, resisting arrest, breaking the law, etc.?
Maybe Garner should not have resisted arrest? Garner must have known just how bad his overall heath was.
I haven’t seen the report online anywhere but many news organizations including CNN have a full copy and have reached exactly the same conclusions. So did the Columbia Law School which had this to say on the question of whether there was probable cause to indict for criminal homicide:
I guess the moral of the story is: unless you are a battle-hardened ninja in superb physical condition, do NOT ever argue with a police officer – he might kill you. :rolleyes:
One thing I have wondered about that I didn’t see referenced anywhere in this discussion (though I might have missed it) is why police were arresting Garner at all, since it appears he wasn’t actually even selling illegal cigarettes at the time or doing anything else wrong, and furthermore even if he had been, it seems like the kind of minor offense that could be ticketed. And there was certainly nothing there that seemed to warrant a response by a whole team of officers.
The link in my previous post from the Columbia Law School offers a clue (it’s right near the end):
My understanding is that “broken windows policing” is the strategy of dealing aggressively with relatively minor crime on the theory that maintaining public order promotes an environment that prevents more serious crime from occurring. In one sense I can see the logic of this. I can also see why it’s controversial, and that there are both good and bad ways of going about it.
What I found most disturbing in reading a bit about it was the “stop, frisk, question” tactic that is part of some implementations of this, and which appears to be what the New York cops were doing to Garner, even though he had apparently done nothing wrong at the time. If not used with great discretion this is tantamount to officially sanctioned harassment which can easily become racially targeted, and what strikes me in particular is that it’s the exact diametric opposite of the spirit of community-friendly policing in which police are explicitly instructed to NOT do this.
(post shortened)
I understand that CNN is now known for pulling information out of it’s thin air but is it considered the normal practice of Columbia Law School professors to reference Associated Press articles instead of quoting directly from the medical examiner’s report?
*Was there probable cause to indict for criminal homicide occurred?
Yes.
First, the Medical Examiner for the City of New York conducted an autopsy and concluded that Garner died from compression of the neck.[9] The cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation by chokehold.[10]
…Notes -
[9] Associated Press, supra note 6
[10] Id.*
What led to choke hold death
*…But the larger question remains: Why was a team of six officers enforcing an almost laughably low-level crime like selling loose cigarettes for 50 cents apiece?
The answer lies in New York’s dramatically successful experiment with battling an out-of-control crime wave in the early 1990s, much of it built on a “broken windows” theory first developed by criminologists George Kelling and the late James Q. Wilson and laid out in a famous 1982 Atlantic Monthly magazine article.
The idea is shorthand for a phenomenon known to sociologists: Leaving an otherwise safe building with an unfixed broken window signals to criminals that nobody cares about the property, which quickly becomes a haven for prostitution, drug dealing and serious crimes.
With murders back then hitting more than 2,000 per year, NYPD cops were told by Bratton to stop waiting for the next 911 call and tasked with enforcing seemingly minor “quality of life” matters like public urination, panhandling and vandalism that made people feel unsafe.
The strategy provided an immediate payoff. Cops doing quality-of-life patrols in the subways discovered that people jumping the turnstile (entering without paying) often turned out to have drugs, guns or outstanding warrants.
Most turnstile-jumpers weren’t dangerous felons, but it turned out that dangerous felons often didn’t bother to pay the fare. So enforcing small violations helped catch truly dangerous criminals.
Even more important, when streets and subways began to feel safer, more people used them – and the very presence of more law-abiding citizens always acts as a deterrent to crime (it creates more witnesses who are likely to point out the bad guys to cops or actually intervene to stop certain kinds of crimes)*.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/22/opinion/louis-garner-broken-windows/index.html?
Today, we obtained a full copy of Eric Garner’s autopsy report. Anderson walked through the findings along with the video of Garner’s arrest with forensic scientist Lawrence Kobilinsky and emergency medicine physician Dr. Sampson Davis.
Just because you don’t like the information doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
“Broken windows” policing is just what I talked about upthread, except that I pointed out that it has disturbing downsides, unlike your predictable enthusiastic endorsement, or the CNN opinion piece claiming it’s been “dramatically successful” when in fact crime rates have been dropping all over the country because of demographic changes, when in fact the Columbia Law School piece states that there is “no reliable evidence that ‘broken windows policing’ is an effective law enforcement strategy” and that “it resulted in a 68% increase in allegations of police misconduct to the CCRB over the following three years”.
Here is the exact opposite approach that’s working a lot better – that emphasizes community-friendly policing instead of murdering citizens:
(reposted from the Pit thread)
Police shootings in Philadelphia have dropped precipitously this year, largely due to a “shake-up” in training and tactics. This is just one example, and one year, but it might show that cops can adequately protect themselves while shooting and killing fewer people.
What information? You’re being fed filtered autopsy information supplied by AP, CNN, and two law professors. I would prefer to see the actual autopsy report.
What information are you using? AP publishes their version of the autopsy report. Two law professors use the AP version of the autopsy report to substantiate their version of the autopsy report. Other media outlets quote either, or both, of the popular versions of the autopsy report. Everything/anything but the actual autopsy report.
It’s not a matter of whether or not I like the information in the actual autopsy report, I prefer to see the actual autopsy report. YMMV.
(p.s. The CNN video at your linked website didn’t run. Maybe the site is currently busy? 
)
NYC’s Time Square was considered something of a Mos Eisley Spaceport. (“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.) Programs like NYPD’s “Broken Windows” policy made it clear to the criminal element that they would be facing a much higher chance of being arrested if they continued to operate in the area. And then, as if by magic, the crime level dropped. Businesses were encouraged to invest in the area. Locals and tourists returned to the area and spent money. “Broken Windows” has obviously been a complete failure :rolleyes:
I’m in Toronto, and it should be pointed out that the recent Toronto policing intitiatives were in response to a history of scandals concerning violence against minorities and allegations of racial profilings and police bias.
This lead to a major shake-up in policing a few years ago, headed by the so-caller PACER Report. Lots of detail here:
http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/pacer/
Here is a more user-friendly explaination:
http://tpsnews.ca/stories/2014/07/fair-policing-not-black-and-white/
It is of note that the new approach is heavily based on “community policing” strategies (that is, having individual cops get to know the neighbourhoods they work in), and the widespread use of body cameras. Also, that addressing issues of bias in policing is front and centre.
In light of what is happening down south, it will be interesting to see the results of this large-scale initative.
Where did I say that cleaning up Times Square was a bad idea? Or that when neighborhoods deteriorate, that law enforcement shouldn’t be involved in its rehabilitation? Your example illustrates nothing about proper and ethical law enforcement or about the point I was making. Some aspects of “broken window policing”, and specifically the way some New York cops have been abusing its guidelines, leads to harassment, police abuses (68% more allegations of police misconduct since NYPD introduced the policy), poor community relations, and apparently sometimes the murder of a citizen. Please re-read what I posted in #473 about the new Toronto Police Services guidelines, which are the exact opposite of “broken window policing” and yet are specifically intended to apply to the rehabilitation of troubled neighborhoods which is precisely where police abuses and police-community conflicts most often occur.
Cleveland police apparently have an endemic problem with excessive violence, too, and this isn’t the first time that the Justice Department has tried to deal with it. Police overreaction and excessive force seems to be a common problem.
The difference between all of those examples is they were legal situations that either deprived blacks of liberty or prohibited blacks from exercising the same rights as whites; versus the current example where you believe because a black person is involved core constitutional protections involving criminal trials should be removed to insure that the evil white cops go to prison. You don’t get to take away core constitutional rights just because 150 years ago some people were forced to pick cotton.
Nope, and I knew or at least hoped it would be commented on. When a group of people don’t want to treat situations as individual events that need to be analyzed on their merits, but instead situations where we must assume “white cop bad” “black suspect good” they’re choosing not to be evaluated as individuals and thus deserve collective condemnation.
Not everything is an individual situation. Some things should be evaluated/opposed collectively, and some shouldn’t. Any use of police force is a highly individualized situation, that should be judged on its individual merits. In fact, the criminal justice system in general is quite properly only set up to deal with individualized scenarios. No two frauds are alike, no two homicides etc. They need to be adjudicated on the individual merits.
If people were just advocating for systemic changes to try and fix ways in which the justice system as a whole perhaps is not equitable, that’s one thing, but people are actually protesting here demanding that individual police officers go to prison in contravention to the legal system. And that’s a serious problem, enough that we need to look at this imbecilic collective lynch mob mentality and denounce it in the strongest terms.
Now, do I think all blacks necessarily have this group think opinion? No, but these people are putting themselves out there as representatives of the black community and aside from Charles Barkley I’ve not heard many other voices contradicting it. It’s similar to the people who whine about Muslim extremists or Republican extremists even, being portrayed as representative of the whole. The loudest voice will fairly be used to judge the entire group, it is the group’s responsibility to silence that voice if it is truly not representative.