^^ you can see it all right here, the entire grisly killing.
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This time there is no mitigating evidence. This time, unlike with Michael Brown, a camera filmed the entire sequence. It’s all right there for everyone to watch.
This is how NYC police kill a man.
They’re actually quite accustomed to it. Unarmed Black men get shot by NYC police with some regularity. many die. A New York Times article published just yesterday told the sad history of killings of unarmed, totally innocent public housing occupants by NYC police patrolling stairwells and hallways. Nor are these all that NYC police have killed, or abused, or harrassed as amatter of speciic policy.
Some have actually been charged, convicted, and jailed. The torture of one Abner Louima, in Brooklyn, who was sodomised by police using a broom handle, resulted in two policemen convicted of felonious assault and battery.
But not this time.
This was no Michael Brown matter. Eric Garner did not assault the officer,m did not reach for his gun, did not punch him in the face. The officer in that cases had some justification; in this case, none at all. You can see why, right there, in the video.
Picture it : a large man is arrested for selling untaxed cigarettes. that alone makes one go, WTF ? You arrest a man or selling cigarettes not taxed ? Why can’t you just write him a citation and tell him to appear in court ? is it necessary to arrest him ? Not that we cn see.
But not only is Eric Garner arrested for this heinous, shocking offense (!), he is then put into a chokehold that violates the NYC Police Department’s own rules, and is held in that choke hold until he dies. You can see it all, every detail, on the full length, clear video.
The officer, one David Pantaleo, told a Staten Island grand jury that he had no intenhtion of killing Mr. Garner. Probably so; but kill him bhe did; and by pursuing actions of harrassmnet that the NYC police have been pursuing, against Black men, for many, many years as a matter of express policy.
Those harrassments violate the civil rights of people and are intended to do so, a policy of keeping a full court pressure on against men o color no matter who they are or where. The goal has been, hit them for the small stuff and they’ll not dare to do the big stuff. That’s like saying, kill them, and they’ll definitely commit no crimes.
In this country we accept that crime takes place even though it should not, because the alternative is a police state in which no one has any civil rights unless the police grant it. That is not America.
A Federal Grand Jury will now sit. It should indict Mr. Pantaleo. He should be tried; he should be fired from the NYC police. If convicted — of manslaughter, probably — he should be sentenced. Police must understand — must learn — must accept — that they cannot just take any measures they feel like taking against whomever they feel like taking them. An unarmed man accused of a minor, economic, entirely non violent crime is violently killed. This is not OK.
Repeat : it is NOT OK.
— Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere
Here and Sphere 