When I first saw the video of Eric Garner being subdued by NYPD officers using the infamous and banned choke hold, which he later died from, I wasn't shocked that this had happened. The NYPD, after all, aren't known to be without controversy. But it wasn't until I read and article about Spike Lee splicing footage of Eric Garner and a scene from his movie Do The Right Thing , where police used a choke hold to subdue the character Radio Raheem, that I realized why. This scene was based on the 1983 killing of graffiti artist Michael Stewart, who witnesses said was killed after officers administered a choke hold to subdue him. In the movie, while Raheem is being choked and is eventually killed, someone in the crowd says: "They did it again! Just like Michael Stewart!"
Aside from the fact that the tactics used in Eric Garner's arrest were banned in 1993, the reasoning that Eric Garner did not die from the choke hold ranges from ridiculous to insane. There have been reports that the choke hold wasn't an "actual choke hold" because Eric Garner was too tall and too big for the officer to get his elbow across Garner's neck to apply it to where the officer could actually choke him. Really? In the video, you can actually see the officer hanging off of Eric Garner's back. I don't know about you, but if someone shorter than me has their arm around my neck and hangs from there, I'm pretty sure they're going to choke me in some way.
Other reports mention that Garner had asthma, and that had more to do with his subsequent cardiac arrest and death than a "supposed" choke hold did. One report even went as far to say that Garner's apparent pleas of not being able to breathe could not have been made if someone was choking him. I have to admit, these responses to this incident are, well, fucking amazing. The thought that went into these rebuttals are scholarly at best. I mean, hey, you punch a guy in his face, break his nose and a bone happens to puncture his brain and kills him, you're not responsible for that, are you? Could a defense be that you weren't strong enough to hit someone that hard or that you were too short to actually make that much of an impact? I guess it would depend on who you actually were and who your victim was.
This is what I saw. Eric Garner, a big man indeed, was choked and tackled to the ground by at least 3 or 4 officers. Yes, one officer dragged him to the ground with that choke hold, hanging off of his back. While on the ground, an officer is seen pushing Garner's face into the concrete sidewalk. During the scuffle, while he is being handcuffed, you can hear him repeatedly say: "I can' t breathe!" This is where every officer that was on the scene failed miserably. There is no way to spin this to where every officer there is not accountable, from the one who choke dragged him to the ground, to the one who held his face pressed down into the concrete, to those who watched it all happen. The defense of, "well, he had asthma and he was a large man" doesn't stand at all. To say he died from cardiac arrest and not from the choke hold is stupid.
It has been reported that Eric Garner had earlier been involved in an altercation that he was trying to break up. When police approached him, they confronted him in regards to selling illegal cigarettes. The video picks up conversation that Garner was having with the officers, with him stating that he was constantly harassed by officers on a regular basis. "Every time you see me you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today!” he yelled (Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/staten-island-man-dies-puts-choke-hold-article-1.1871486#ixzz38PBJCykD). When Gardner refused to put his hands behind his back after officers repeatedly asked him to, that's when the plain clothes officer jumped him. Some have concluded that if Gardner had just cooperated with officers, then none of this would have happened. As a native New Yorker, who has had a number of run ins with the police there, I understand that cooperating with police officers, as a Black man, is not always the end all be all solution. It was apparent that Garner had his own previous run ins with the NYPD and he felt it was necessary to not put up with it that day. So it would seem to me that the lesser of two evils for Garner that day was to make a stand. As trained officers the way they chose to handle this situation was wrong and would have still been wrong even if Eric Garner not died. The bottom line is, these officers felt like Garner was not yielding to there authority and they felt the need to let Gardner know "who was in charge". In the article link above, it is reported that the officer who choked Garner looked right into the camera that the witness was carrying and said: "This had nothing to do with the fight, this had something to do with something else" and walked away. So it seems that the intentions and motive behind this attack, and yes, that is what this is, were ulterior. Even the EMS workers who responded to the scene didn't seem to act properly.
The sad thing is, once again when discussing the death of a Black man by the hands of someone who didn't look like them or were representing some form of authority, we are only left to speculate why this event happened. The knee jerk reaction is two sided, it's race related and it's not. In New York, there is a common distrust between police officers and the inner city public, made up mostly of minorities. People on the outside looking in attribute this, among young people for the most part, as a result of the hip-hop culture and it's advertised disdain for police. I find that rather insulting, especially when most Black men, at some point in their lives in any major city in this country, has had at least one unpleasant experience with a police officer, based solely on the color of his skin. In New York, the NYPD has a very long history of inappropriate interaction with minorities, with the recent stop and frisk program and the Sean Bell incident in 2006 being the freshest and most high profile incidents in our minds. And there a hundreds, if not thousands of incidents that go unreported. Think about this, we only know about this incident with Eric Garner because someone had enough courage to film it and because Eric Garner was killed. Had he survived, would it have even made the news? How many other incidents happened that day that we know nothing about? How many have happened since?
NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton said that the entire 35,000 member force of police will undergo a retraining in the wake of Garner's death. But Rev. Al Sharpton, speaking at Garner's funeral in Brooklyn, said this, which puts the training of police into perspective and the human decency we all should have in the forefront: "The choke hold is illegal. But even if you lost your training memory, a man in your arm saying ‘I can’t breathe’ … when does your decency kick in? When does your morality kick in?” Training is not in question here, it is the motives of those police officers and their lack of human decency to acknowledge that a man that they had just choked to the ground lay there dying and they didn't care.
I'm through asking "why?" because I already know the answer. I've asked "why?" in this blog so many times but I'm through asking. Rev. Sharpton told those who had gathered at Eric Garner's funeral that "we should not act as though we should be here tonight. This is an occasion that should not have happened." He continued by strongly suggesting what the real problem is and what the solution should be. "Let’s not play games with this one." he said. "You don’t need no training to stop choking a man saying 'I can’t breathe'. You don’t need no cultural orientation to stop choking a man saying 'I can’t breathe'. You need to be prosecuted.” And this is where the problem lies. In so many cases, officers that engage in this type of behavior are hardly ever prosecuted like they would be if the tables had been reversed, or if they had not been officers. The NYPD is notorious for misconduct and cover ups when it comes to cases like this, so their officers act without consideration for whatever consequences may come down. I'm pretty sure that if the officer who choke dragged Garner down to the ground thought he would be held accountable if something bad happened, he may have acted differently. The same goes for the officers that shot Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo. Had it not been for the fact that Abner Louima survived his police brutality ordeal with the NYPD in 1997and was able to testify against those officers, Justin Volpe and Charles Schwarz might be free men today. The senseless brutality that the NYPD is known for breeds a culture of corruption and cover up with no sense of accountability and, seemingly, no sign of slowing up. Under former mayors, most notably Rudolph Guliani, the city feigned to care about the growing distrust between the NYPD and the inner city citizens of New York, but nothing was ever done. Under Mayor Bloomberg, arguably one of the better mayors in recent history on an economic level, police brutality cases weren't as prevalent but misconduct and police harassment still prevailed, especially under the Stop and Frisk program and the Sean Bell killing that happened on his watch. So it would seem that, even under new mayor Bil de Blasio, these kind of incidents are as much a part of the NYPD as their uniform. It's about power and control. The fact that Eric Garner refused to be harassed on that particular day, after he was supposedly breaking up a fight, the fact that he couldn't be controlled by four "trained" officers without a physical altercation, ultimately cost him his life. Sadly, he was not the first and he will not be the last.
But what can we do, the public? What can we do to stop the needless viloent confrontations that happen so often when it comes to police officers and minorities in, not just New York City, but everywhere? It's tough to admit but it seems like there isn't much that can be done. When Trayvon Martin was killed, there were rallies across the country. Why can't that same thing happen again? I'm pretty sure Rev. Al Sharpton has something planned but this should be something that occurs on a national level. Police brutality and harassment exists in every city, usually in low income and urban areas. Even here in Greenville, SC, I've witnessed police unecessarily stops drivers in my own neighborhood for going around speed bumps, just to be surrounded by multiple officers and held for almost an hour, often right in front of my home. I've been pulled over numerous times. surrounded by 3 or 4 or 5 police cruisers, just to be told later that my license plate light was out. I'm not saying by any means that all police officers harass people needlessly, but it occurs too often. I've been questioned about the vehicle I was driving, where I was going or coming from, asked if I was transporting drugs, soliciting prostitutes when I have been in the car with a female, etc.. Too many times instances like these ends up with a unecessary death of either the citizen or officer, due to the response of the individual who feels like he or she is being unduely harassed. I've been eye to eye with an officer who told me that it was the law that I do whatever it is that an officer tells me to do, without any response back. In the South, that is a good 'ol boy mentality that is used to intimidate individuals who don't know the law or their rights. As a people, we need to care more and do more, myself included. This is a problem that affects everyone nationwide and it should be addressed every time we hear about it. As long as it seems that the communities where these events happen and communites nationwide like them have accepted this type of behavior as a by product of living with corrupt police and law enforcement, then it will remain a norm. The people have to unite and stand up for themselves and each other.
Side note: In the days since this incident was first reported, what has permeated the news has been more and more justification for the police's actions and more and more ridiculous posturing by those in the media who have been entrusted to report the news, not their opinion. On Fox News Sunday, there was a segment that said the outrage of those who feel like Eric Garner was needlessly assaulted and killed is prioritizing the criminals rights over the job of law enforcement officers.
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