Posted on 12/03/2014 2:05:50 PM PST by blam
“What if...”
...has nothing to do with what is.
A man died over a misdemeanor. The police response was totally out of proportion with the crime.
As to the resisting arrest charge it would have been dismissed in court because resisting arrest for a misdemeanor that does not require an arrest is not a crime in New York.
In any case, the civil lawsuit will be sizable because it will go before a jury of people who will see the video and ask WTF the NYPD were thinking when they killed a man just for selling cigarettes.
Yes, thank God that another cigarette seller is not out there, roaming the streets. The citizens of New York City can sleep safer knowing that.
And please tell me I didn't need to add a </sarcasm> tag to that.
“He was resisting arrest.”
Exactly! There is similarity in this and the Michael Brown cases in that both decedents were petty criminals who were resisting arrest. But that’s where the similarity ends. This guy wasn’t presenting the kind of threat to the cops that Brown did. He wasn’t attacking anyone. The bad feature for all of us is that cops have come to the point all too frequently, where they don’t really care what happens to the individual they are arresting. Any threat is treated the same way. And what’s really disturbing to me is that there are people who will risk their own lives for so very little. In both cases, it was over a small quantity of tobacco.
Agreed, clearly hear him saying “I can’t breath”... Having once put some it a choke hold, that does not happen.
My problem is there appears to be no attempt to give mouth to mouth, CPR ?? Need longer video
Yes. And it was/is a tragedy. But he died as the result of a heart attack when he failed to do what the police asked him to do. It wasn't about the cigarettes at that point.
He’s dead because the liberals who run that city run it like North Korea. New York city is what I like to call “North Korea with food” but only the food they allow you to eat. Every-single-aspect of your life is regulated. I grew up there and moved 2 years ago, I couldn’t take it anymore. Sneeze the wrong way and there is a cop giving you a ticket, to this day I’m still dealing with all the tickets. The cops hate it but liberals constantly demand they shake people down to support all the welfare breeding cows and illegals. All this guy did is sell one cigarette for 50 cents and here they got 4 cops on his ass.
Once he resisted, it was no longer about the cigarettes. He could have been resisting for any number of reasons.
“Bloomberg gestapoized the police force against tobacco, rather than having the police look for murderers, rapists, and drug pushers.”
I strongly recommend to the (few remaining) law and order types here to examine this story closely without the knee-jerk reaction. Basically, this guy died because he was suspected of tax-dodging, and a policeman using a method to subdue an “attacker” (used loosely here) banned by the department killed him.
What I’d like to see here is a civil lawsuit by the family for $200K against the city with $999,999,800,000.00 of punitive damages (seriously). Each and every adult person in NYC is collectively responsible for voting in politicians who passed laws permitting this. They need to pay for it, and it needs to hurt so that they will remember it every year.
Burning and rioting are not justified, but i actually thought a couple of indictments were in order here. I am rather surprised that no cops are to be tried as committing unnecessary acts of brutality. They ganged up and took him down like a pack of wolves attacking a sick aged bear.
That was the most disgusting part of this, they just stood around. Right there all of them should have been fired. Absolutely incredible lack of basic common sense, but like I was saying above the real criminals in this are the liberals who run that city who demand the cops act like shakedown artists for the most mundane offenses like sitting on a milk crate (yes they give out tickets for that) and selling a single cigarette to someone for 50 cents or like in my case attempting to throw out a cup of coffee and missing the can and getting a ticket for littering before I could pick it up. The cops hate it, but liberals are so sickeningly obsessed with financing their socialist BS they make the cops act like shakedown artists for the mob.
They didn't intentionally kill him. And it wasn't about the cigarettes. The heart attack occurred as a result of a struggle when the 400-pound man refused to comply with the officers. They wouldn't have known why he was resisting. Could have been a lot of reasons.
But he wasn't. He was committing the horrendous crime of selling individual cigarettes. And there were four cops there arresting him. I was not aware that New York City was so crime free that they have so many cops to send out to arrest cigarette sellers.
He's dead because four cops jumped his ass for what has to be a misdemeanor.
Kind of ticked me off that he smiled for the guy who was taking the video of the event.
The police have a difficult enough job as it is without guys like that on the force.
“He was resisting arrest.
Then he deserved to die a very painful death.”
He was potentially a public menace, possibly interfering with the collection of taxes. So, he deserved to die. </MASSIVE BARFSARC>.
To the orignal poster; So, I visit NYC, and a bum asks me for a cigarette. Not knowing the local customs, the guy seems polite and I give him one. A cop wrestles me down, won’t tell me what I did, and he kills me. I have a problem with this - both the idiotic law, and the gestapo enforcers of it. Frankly, if I lived there, I’d be in the street over it. This is not a BLACK issue although the powers that be are trying to make it look like one, because that, they can pay off easily.
“They didn’t intentionally kill him”
So that’s the criteria here? He’s still dead.
“That was the most disgusting part of this, they just stood around. Right there all of them should have been fired. Absolutely incredible lack of basic common sense, but like I was saying above the real criminals in this are the liberals who run that city who demand the cops act like shakedown artists for the most mundane offenses like sitting on a milk crate (yes they give out tickets for that) and selling a single cigarette to someone for 50 cents or like in my case attempting to throw out a cup of coffee and missing the can and getting a ticket for littering before I could pick it up. The cops hate it, but liberals are so sickeningly obsessed with financing their socialist BS they make the cops act like shakedown artists for the mob”
Law and order types, please read and at least ATTEMPT to understand the above.
The guy was 400 freaking pounds! And he was resisting. How could they know at that point why? If you’re pulled over for not signaling when making a turn, and a cop tries to stop you, but you instead hit the gas and take off, then suffer a heart attack as a result of the chase, were you killed for not signaling?
I know a dump question in fly over country but NYC isn't fly over country.
If I recall, there was a couple of guys who were trying to render some support to the guy, but it was just not enough.
Police can go a little off from time to time......my used to be nail tech, a terrific and beautiful gal, 32 with an eight year old son, died from the police not giving a damn. Jonny had a drinking problem and was on and off the wagon, she really tried. One night she was in a bar with some friends and got pretty drunk, her ex’s girlfriend came in and a brawl ensued. Jonny went to jail for disorderly, several hours in she started having significant pain and asked for help, which was refused. She was vomiting blood, almost hysterical and It kept getting worse and no one would respond, even the others in the cell were begging someone to help her. At 5:00 in the am, she was found dead of a ruptured appendix.
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