Eric Garner with three of his six children
December 4, 2014
NEW YORK (AP) — The cellphone video of the last moments of Eric Garner’s life showed a white police officer holding the unarmed black man in a chokehold as he repeatedly gasped, “I can’t breathe.”
Eric and Esaw Garner, his wife
Despite the video and a medical examiner’s ruling that the chokehold contributed to the death, a Staten Island grand jury decided Wednesday not to bring any charges against the officer, prompting protests across the country and sending thousands onto New York’s streets, where they marched, chanted and blocked traffic into Thursday morning.
While legal experts note it’s impossible to know how the grand jurors reached their conclusion, they say the Garner case, like Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, once again raised concerns about the influence local prosecutors have over the process of charging the police officers they work with on a daily basis.
VOD readers, YouTube removed the original video below from its site saying it was intended to “harass, bully or threaten.” Didn’t they mean the NYPD? So here’s another one with full commentary.
VOD: in second video, killer kops stand over Eric Garner, who is totally unresponsive and clearly dead, for at least seven minutes, appearing to pretend he is still alive while they wait for EMS, even talking to him after finding no pulse. Officers are trained in CPR, they obviously refused to try to resuscitate the man they had just asphyxiated. All of them should go to prison for life for Eric Garner’s death.
“The video speaks for itself,” said Jeffrey Fagan, a professor at Columbia Law School. “It appears to show negligence. But if we learned anything from the Brown case, it’s the power of prosecutors to construct and manage a narrative in a way that can shape the outcome.”
Protesters flood Rockefeller Center during Xmas tree lighting.
Ekow N. Yankah, a professor at Cardozo School of Law, agreed that, “It is hard to understand how a jury doesn’t see any probable cause that a crime has been committed or is being committed when looking at that video, especially.”
James A. Cohen, who teaches at Fordham University Law School, went further, saying, “Logic doesn’t play a role in this process.”
U.S. Attorney Eric Holder said federal prosecutors would conduct their own investigation of Garner’s July 17 death as officers were attempting to arrest him for selling untaxed cigarettes on the street. The New York Police Department also is doing an internal probe which could lead to administrative charges against Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who remains on desk duty.
Protesters chanted “We can’t breathe!”
The grand jury’s decision prompted emotional protests around New York and in cities from Atlanta to California. The same day, a white police chief in Eutawville, South Carolina, was charged with murder in the death of an unarmed black man after an argument at a town hall meeting.
In Manhattan, demonstrators laid down in Grand Central Terminal, walked through traffic on the West Side Highway and blocked the Brooklyn Bridge. A City Council member cried. Hundreds converged on the heavily secured area around the annual Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting with a combination of professional-looking signs and hand-scrawled placards reading, “Black lives matter” and “Fellow white people, wake up.” And in the Staten Island neighborhood where Garner died, people reacted with angry disbelief and chanted, “I can’t breathe!” and “Hands up — don’t choke!”
Demonstrators flooded streets in New York City, Oakland, CA and other places across the country after grand jury refused to indict NYPD killer cop in Eric Garner murder.
Police said 83 people were arrested, mostly on disorderly conduct charges. The demonstrations were largely peaceful, in contrast to the arson and looting that accompanied the decision nine days earlier not to indict the officer in Brown’s death.
Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan said the grand jury found “no reasonable cause” to bring charges, but unlike the chief prosecutor in the Ferguson case, New York law forbids him from giving details on the grand jury action. The district attorney was seeking a court order to have some information released.
Protesters block Market Street in San Francisco.
Garner’s widow, Esaw, said she had no faith in the local prosecutors.
“As far as the police and the DA, there was no sincerity from Day One,” she said in an interview on the “Today” show.
In order to find Pantaleo criminally negligent, the grand jury would have had to determine he knew there was a “substantial risk” that Garner would have died. Pantaleo’s lawyer and union officials argued that the grand jury got it right, saying he used an authorized takedown move — not a banned chokehold — and that Garner’s poor health was the main cause of his death.
NYC protesters block traffic on Brooklyn Bridge.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has led protests over the custody death of Garner and the police shooting of Brown in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, said the New York decision is yet another reason he has lost confidence in state grand juries and local prosecutors to bring such cases.
“State grand juries tend to be too compromised with local politics because local prosecutors run for office and they have to depend on the police for evidence,” he said. “Don’t we have the right to question grand juries when we’re looking at a video and seeing things that don’t make sense?”
Eric Garner verdict protest in Oakland, CA.
The video shot by an onlooker showed the 43-year-old Garner telling a group of police officers to leave him alone as they tried to arrest him. Pantaleo responded by wrapping his arm around Garner’s neck in what appeared to be a chokehold.
The heavyset father of six, who had asthma, was heard repeatedly gasping, “I can’t breathe!” He later died at a hospital.
A forensic pathologist hired by Garner’s family agreed with the medical examiner, saying there was hemorrhaging on Garner’s neck indicative of neck compressions.
Protest in Seattle, Washington.
Columbia’s Fagan said another factor was that the Staten Island grand jury came from the most conservative and least racially diverse of the city’s five boroughs, and home to many current and retired police officers and their families.
“Staten Island is a very different borough,” he said. “In fact, it may be closer to suburban St. Louis, and we can’t discount that.”
I am from Vancouver,Canada and I just heard about the five heroic NFL players who showed solidarity with the two Black People who were killed in Ferguson and New York.More celebrities from the Sports World and Hollywood should show their solidarity with the two Black People who were killed by the racist police.
The Black people in the USA and the Palestinian People got the same enemy,the U.S.gov.The U.S. gov. supports the apartheid Israeli gov.that kills Palestinian People on a daily basis.Its good that the Palestinian People are supporting the Black People in Ferguson and New York.Malcolm X in the 1960s went to the Middle East and spoke to the people there.He told the people there about the struggle of the Black People in the USA and how both struggles were related.This solidarity will free the Black People and the Palestinian People. Keep up the good work.