What does that have to do with anything? What a weird argument. “I’ve got someone in a chokehold and he says he’s having trouble breathing (using short hand everyone knows), but I don’t need to stop because my first aid teacher told me he’s really ok?”
The fact that he died from being choked means the choke hold WAS impacting his breathing right up to the moment he could breathe no longer.
Who taught you first aid, and can you sue them for fraud?
Am I in a George Orwell novel? Joseph Heller? Franz Kafka? You guys would tell me if I was, no?
Do “small football teams” of cops travel around NYC? What lead up to the point of the video where he was surrounded by 4-5 cops?
Was it a “chokehold” or not? The union says no.
What’s the definition of and punishment for resisting arrest? Hopefully if we end up spending millions to prove that cops are good people 99% of the time we can at least deter that kind of behaviour.
I’m now convinced that there is a secret society to which certain right-wing extremists belong that obliges them to defend the police at all costs and at all times. It’s the only way to explain the predictable consistency of some of the comments in both this and the Ferguson threads and the utter contempt for facts and evidence and for the principle of measured response. One really does wonder if there’s anything a police officer could ever do to have them calling for his indictment, unless of course it happens to them personally. Other than that, I don’t think there is.
Apparently local merchants had complained about Garner selling cigarettes. Police were responding a fight nearby, which Garner (per witness accounts) had helped break up, when they decided to accost Garner.
The officer throws his arm around Garner’s neck and holds it there throughout the struggle. Garner died due to compression of the neck. I don’t know what else you’d call it.
New York’s relevant statute:
…which seems incredibly broad compared to, say, Kentucky’s"
In both states, the offense is a class A misdemeanor.
Frankly, I can’t believe anyone would defend the police’s, and Officer Pantaleo in particular’s, conduct in this case. Responding to about two seconds of non-compliance from a nonthreatening suspect with a gang-tackle and a choke hold is disgusting, unacceptable behavior and a clear example of excessive force.
He wasn’t “resisting arrest”. He was “resisting being attacked”, which is not the same thing.
An “arrest” is when the cops tell someone they are not at liberty to leave. They can enforce such an “arrest” with force, if it is resisted or the suspect attempts to leave (though the force itself has to be proportionate).
Importantly, if the cops fail to “arrest” you, you can … leave whenever you want. The simple act of cops attacking you is not an “arrest” in and of itself!
In order to affect an “arrest”, the police must engage in certain legal formalities - which vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. I posted what appears to be the New York law on this point upthread, concerning “arrests” where no specific warrant for an arrest has been issued.
The significant section states that, in order to affect an “arrest”, the NY cops must do the following:
The language is imperative (the police “must” do this). If they fail to do it, it is not a legal “arrest”.
In this case, there is no indication on the tape that the suspect had ever been informed of any such thing. Furthermore, there is no indication that informing the suspect of the reason for the arrest was “impractical”. This hugely overweight man was not a ‘flight risk’ and he was not physically resisting the cops (that is, before they attacked him). There was no obvious reason they could not have said “you are under arrest for … X”. It is less than clear what reasons they could have given.
Therefore, there had been no “arrest” under New York law, so the man was not “resisting arrest”.
I’m not sure whether the policeman who killed Eric Garner should be imprisoned, but he should definitely be booted from the force forever.
I read Joseph Wambaugh’s ***The Choirboys ***a few years ago, and I recall a scene in which a young cop working vice went on an extended chase of a prostitute he’d been trying to arrest. The chase eventually causes a car wreck, and the hooker gets away anyway.
The cop’s commander dresses him down. He says, essentially, “You started all this for a MISDEMEANOR? What’s wrong with you? I thought you were SMART? She gets away this time, you’ll get her next time.”
Point being, there’s NO FREAKING REASON to turn an arrest for petty crime into a matter of life and death. I don’t care if Eric Garner was resisting arrest. He was the pettiest of petty criminals. If he’d gone along quietly, what would his punichment have been- a fine? Confiscation of his cigarettes? A night in jail? BIG DEAL! There is no reason in the world to use deadly force with a guy like him!
Choke holds are serious business. If a cop MUST use them, they’re to be reserved for violent criminals- not for hookers, not for ticket scalpers, and not for guys selling tax-free smokes.
I would be inclined to say that, if anything, this incident lends more credence to the cause of the Ferguson protestors, not less. The lack of an indictment in Ferguson was supposed to be based on a lack of clear evidence. This case, where there is clear video evidence of what happened, and where someone died who was clearly no threat, tells us that there is something more going on.
Part of what is going on is the notorious difficulty of indicting, let alone convicting, a police officer in the US under any circumstances. But Amy Davidson, writing for the New Yorker, today suggests that a further complication is the tendency to undervalue the lives of blacks, and the companion problem of a tendency to over-weight the intentions of whites. It’s hard to shake the notion that there’s a great deal of truth to this.
I believe his point is that what you say may all be true, but it would have been preferable for purposes of getting the message out if a different case was chosen for the cause célèbre.
In particular, both the Garner and Rice cases were far more clear-cut - it is hard for anyone to reasonably argue they were justified, based on the evidence so far.
The American Red Cross. Who taught you that disagrees with them?
Actually doing something wrong would be a start. Every one of these cases of “cops going too far” this year has turned out to be a completely legitimate exercise of power against lawbreakers, that people are objecting to on visceral, non-logical grounds.
Why do these threads always come down to name calling or weird CT type stuff? Can’t people just have an honest difference of opinion without resorting to calling anyone who disagrees with you names like ‘racist’, calling them disingenuous because they look at it differently or saying there are weird left/right wing CTs that are behind it all? 
If the races of the participants were switched and it was a gaggle of black officers responsible for the death of a white man resisting arrest, I would feel exactly the same as I do now. One’s status under the law is not determined by the color of their skin and this is nothing more than petty race-baiting where race is not an issue.
The American Red Cross from this reality.
Firstly, they didn’t use “deadly force” against him - they used reasonable force that happened to have an undesireable effect because he was a morbidly obese diabetic with high blood pressure and asthma who nonetheless decided that getting into a physical confrontation with five cops was a bad idea.
Secondly, in his case, since it was not his first offense selling untaxed cigarettes, it was a Class E felony under New York law, punishable by up to four years in jail.
It’s easy to stand behind hypotheticals that have an almost zero chance of happening, isn’t it?
It’s not reasonable which is why it was banned from the police force. Why do you think it was banned?
ETA: In all seriousness, is there anything the police would do you wouldn’t defend?
You’re entitled to your own view of what constitutes a legitimate excercise of police power against a criminal suspect, but not to define the motives of others. I object on entirely logical grounds: exposing Garner to the risk of serious injury or death would only be justified if he was an immediate threat to others. He wasn’t. Therefore, the police conduct wasn’t justified.
Racism isn’t actually a “conspiracy theory.”