Posted on 07/18/2014 1:04:10 PM PDT by PoloSec
(Video has been removed from JP and youtube...)
A 400-pound Staten Island dad of six, suffering for asthma, died Thursday after a cop put him in a chokehold and other officers appeared to slam his head against the sidewalk, according to a video of the incident published on The Daily News website.
“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” Eric Garner, 43, is heard screaming after at least five NYPD officers took him down in front of a Tompkinsville beauty supply store when he resisted an arrest.
Within moments Garner stopped struggling and appeared to be unconscious as police called paramedics to the scene.
The Staten Island resident was sitting in front of Bay Beauty on Bay St. and Victory Blvd. just before 5 p.m. when two plainclothes cops began questioning him about selling untaxed cigarettes, the Daily News reported. he started yelling at the cops that he was innocent.
A guy, who shot the video below, tried to intervene, telling the cops his friend had just broken up a fight between three men and had not been selling cigarettes. But when backup uniformed officers arrived, the cops moved in to cuff Garner, the video shows.
“Don’t touch me, please,” he said. When Garner refused orders to put his hands behind his back, one of the plainclothes cops got behind him and put him in a chokehold, the footage shows.
Three uniformed officers joined in on the arrest, knocking him to the ground. He screamed, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe! Get off of me, get off of me!” several times before he went silent.
In a statement on Friday, NYC Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito called for a “full, transparent and thorough investigation into the incident which led to the death of Eric Garner. New Yorkers expect and deserve to be safe and those protections must include those who are in the custody of NYPD.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement, “On behalf of all New Yorkers, I extend my deepest condolences to the family of Mr. Garner, who died yesterday afternoon while being placed in police custody. We have a responsibility to keep every New Yorker safe, and that includes when individuals are in custody of the NYPD. That is a responsibility that Police Commissioner Bratton and I take very seriously. We are harnessing all resources available to the City to ensure a full and thorough investigation of the circumstances of this tragic incident. The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau is working closely with the Office of the Richmond County District Attorney, which is leading this investigation.”
The mayor will have a press availability at City Hall this afternoon, before he takes off for vacation in Italy.
Keep posting here wideawake.
I want everyone on the forum to watch the video and read your comments.
Probable cause entails some element of proof. The crack rocks in someone’s pocket. The telltail sign of alcohol on one’s breathe while driving. The stack of illegal cigarettes sitting next to this guy on the sidewalk. Did the cops have anything for, ‘probable cause’, besides a hunch?
If the cops went to handcuff the fellow because he became argumentative, then that is wrong...
It was a “snuff film”.
And every time an innocent man dies at the hands of the police it is an outrage.
Why does the law apply to me, but not to him?
I already know your answer, but just tell us outright.
I agree. But that certainly isn’t what happened here.
2 posted on 7/18/2014, 1:05:46 PM by wideawake
A slick way for wideawake to distract from this very ugly event.
Everyone should watch the video...
You must be reading a different thread. The cops started it. The cops ended it.
The full video? Or the jump cut one which is the only one available?
You almost never hear of a 400lb man having a heart attack.
2 posted on 7/18/2014, 1:05:46 PM by wideawake
Way too excessive force.
The policeman that killed him needs to be fired, fined, and sent to JAIL.
I know this man didn’t die from a gunshot, but Mark Steyn makes some good points here and it applies to this case:
Gun Control
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3179560/posts
It would be nice to get a Supreme Court ruling on that one of these days. Mr Tolan lives in daily pain, so he came out ahead of the poor schizophrenic and the pre-school lady, who are both six feet under. If someone shoots up a grade school or a movie theatre, the cable airwaves fill with experts demanding gun control. But every day Americans are shot for no reason other than that armed bureaucrats “don’t have time for this”. Any chance of a little more gun control there?
As I always say in these circumstances, if you need to shoot a schizophrenic, a teenage partygoer, a lame septuagenarian, a confused hobo, etc, etc, etc, you’re doing it wrong. “The book” is the problem. “The book” is what needs to change. Anyone who goes into law enforcement assumes the risk that a traffic stop might turn out to be something more. Mr Tolan, Miss Ramsey and the rest of us should not have to assume any such risk. In routine encounters with law enforcement, a citizen should not have to weigh the likelihood that the officer will decide to shoot him dead. That’s about as basic a standard for civilized society as one can muster.
Mark Steyn is a national treasure. He is one of a hand full of people who, if I happen to disagree with him I rethink my position. I wish Rush would retire and hand the show over to him.
You almost never hear of a 400lb man having a heart attack. Suggesting it was all his fault.
2 posted on 7/18/2014, 1:05:46 PM by wideawake
The full video? Or the jump cut one
You initially suggested the man killed himself due to his weight.
Now you're implying there must be more to the video? He must have physically attacked the cops? He had a weapon?
Not what the witnesses are all stated wideawake.
The video is clear, at worst the man was guilty of being civil and pleading with them.
Your support of those government who hide behind their authority while people like this are handled and treated like some foreign murdering enemy, is beyond disturbing.
Seems like in a lot of these cop-induced deaths, the suspect is usually resisting arrest.
Its SOP for cops to squeal "stop resisting" repeatedly, even if the suspect isn't.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhqHEgIgSGU
The video is still out there and has been saved to a thousand hard drives...
I do not deal well with government corruption and or those who support government using their badge of authority to treat Americans like some foreign enemy.
My comments are over on this thread.
You must be thinking of America. That was a wonderful place I had the privilege to be raised in.
The obedient sheeple of the USSA love watching troublemakers be killed.
Blasio will either use this incident to restrain the police from being proactive preventing crimes even more or it will be covered up...
As a good commie probably both...
Officers Daniel Pantaleo and Justin Damico were both put on desk duty a day after the death of Eric Garner.
Number 99 clearly applied an improper (and illegal) choke hold.
By the way, what's with all the tattoos on that one cop in the baggy shorts and tee shirt. The guy looks like a gang banger.
http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1871552.1405654286!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_970/article-choke4-0717.jpg
(1) Al Sharpton is on the case, reluctantly holding press conferences. It is officially a full blown race hustle now. Luckily, New York's new mayor is a veteran race hustler and is happy to join in.
(2) Not only are the police on desk duty, the EMTs at the scene have been suspended. So the full leftist kangaroo court is firmly in session.
(3) The autopsy shows that Mr. Gardner experienced zero trauma to his throat or neck: no bruising, no vertebral displacement, no tearing of ligatures, no internal trauma to the trachea.
The cause of death looks like a plain old heart attack, possibly complicated by his asthma - but possibly not. Possibly not because he was still breathing in the ambulance and because he did not have any asthma medication on him.
This is important, because the hold he was put in was quite obviously not a "choke hold." Here's a hint: if you actually can't breathe, you are not physically capable of saying "I can't breathe." If your trachea is closed - the entire point of an actual "choke hold" - you are rendered unable to verbally complain, as Mr. Gardner did.
(4) The EMTs are on suspension because no one filmed them performing CPR at the scene. They point out that he was unconscious but breathing when they put him on the ambulance - in other words, they did not need to resuscitate him because he was breathing. But political posturing trumps the boring physical facts of reality.
(5) Mr. Gardner, father of six and unemployed, midday sidewalk loiterer, had only been arrested 31 times before. Some of those arrests hadn't even been felonies - some of them were only misdemeanors, as his family helpfully pointed out. So it seems unlikely that the "shock" of being arrested for the umpteenth time was as much a contributing factor to his demise as his last Big Mac was.
It would be great to see the part of the video that was edited out, but it seems like the story is not as exciting as people wanted it to be.
A morbidly obese small time crook is arrested for the 32nd time, goes into cardiac arrest during the police arrest, and dies of a heart attack on the way to the emergency room.
Turns out the problem was not his throat, but his overtaxed heart.
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