Posted on 12/05/2014 4:11:33 AM PST by Kaslin
Like most people across the political spectrum, I approach the Eric Garner arrest video with the requisite amount of dread.
What a shame. What a tragedy. What an unsettling thing to see a man on the day of his death, a premature end following a few moments of conflict with New York City police officers.
Like many conservatives, I have just spent several days standing up for the Ferguson grand jury as it relied on actual evidence to reach a decision in the case of Michael Brown. Those of us who took that stand weathered the attacks of unhinged factions who relied on virtually anything but facts as they fueled a false narrative of a “Gentle Giant” blown away by a racist white police officer.
Amid hopes that cooler heads will prevail as Ferguson fades in the rear view, along comes another non-indictment in the case of a black suspect dying after an interlude with a white officer.
I braced for more reflex cries of racism, more shenanigans from race-baiters, more protesters taking to the streets driven by the baseless narrative that white cops are itching to kill black folk.
All of these unfolded on cue. What I did not expect is a cry of disagreement from conservatives against the New York grand jury, a burst of emotion as undeserved as the venom leveled against Ferguson jurors.
The Michael Brown and Eric Garner deaths are quite different. One involved a violent criminal shot while attacking a police officer, a case whose particulars are clear even without video. The other involves famously watched and re-watched video that nonetheless yielded differences of opinion.
The debate over Garner seems principled and thoughtful, containing several key questions: Did this arrest need to grow so heated so fast? Did those officers use too much force? Did their restraint of him rise to the level of criminality? These were some of the many matters processed by the citizens of the grand jury, and their ultimate decision was that no crime was committed in the attempted arrest of Eric Garner.
I expected pushback from Al Sharpton and Van Jones. I did not expect it from conservative voices at Fox News.
Charles Krauthammer, a steadfast voice usually driven by razor-sharp clarity, found the grand jury’s decision “incomprehensible.” Judge Andrew Napolitano said “this is not a fair application of the law.”
Bill O’Reilly did not go into full wail at the non-indictment, but did share that he was “extremely troubled.”
A perusal of their complaints reveals an unfortunate and hopefully momentary surrender of logic to emotion, a trait all three had spent the previous week criticizing in others.
I’m not immune to the power of the Garner video. I wish I could jump into a time machine and prevent the whole sad thing from happening. I would not go back to the point of the takedown, however. I would go back farther to counsel Mr. Garner on the ill wisdom of resisting arrest— or maybe back even farther, to offer suggestions against breaking the law in the first place.
But while we cannot jump back in time, we most surely can put aside our visceral reactions to the video in order to put ourselves in the shoes of the grand jurors.
They were not asked whether the video upset them. They were not asked if the events were disturbing to watch. They were not asked whether the arrest went flawlessly.
They were asked whether Officer Daniel Pantaleo broke the law in the dispatch of his duties. Their answer was no.
If they had chosen to indict, I would have respected their decision. Unlike Ferguson, the Garner case presents a wide swath of reasonable options. The decision not to indict is surely well within that range, and deserves to be spared criticism from people who are following some other drumbeat.
Krauthammer advocated an involuntary manslaughter charge “at the very least,” tapping into two facts that are entirely irrelevant: “The guy was unarmed and the crime was as petty as they come.” Excuse me? This cries out for another Charles— Barkley in this instance— to sit down and explain to one of America’s top thinkers what was at issue here. “When the cops are trying to arrest you, if you fight back, things go wrong,” the NBA legend told CNN
this week.
That is why Mr. Garner is dead. His lack of a sidearm and the absurdity of the law he broke are of no consequence in a case of an enormous man with vast health problems choosing to fight police making a lawful arrest. Napolitano also obsessed on the admittedly stupid law Garner broke, calling the arrest a “use of deadly force on a person who posed no serious or material threat to the police.”
Wow. Don’t let Barkley go just yet, he needs to spend some time with Judge Nap as well. Someone surely needs to, so that this learned no-nonsense judge can refamiliarize himself with the meaning of “deadly force.” A force is not deadly if you expire in large part due to your own self-created fragile health. While the medical examiner ruled that Garner died as a result of the restraint used against him, the findings also noted that his condition was a vital factor. He was unable to keep his job with the city Parks Department due to his inability to walk even short distances.
And the notion of Garner “posing a threat” is a straw man argument beneath a wise jurist. No one argues that Garner put the officers’ lives at risk. They responded as they did because a sizable suspect was refusing to cooperate. Period.
Amid this wayward chorus, we should thank O’Reilly for not piling on to grand jurors who evaluated evidence as thoughtfully as their Ferguson counterparts. But Bill did join the wave of reactions based not on police procedure but on gut reaction to the video.
“Upon seeing the video that you just saw, and hearing Mr. Garner say he could not breathe, I was extremely troubled. I would have loosened my grip. I desperately wish the officer would have done that.”
Bad spin there, Bill.
The most basic police training teaches that suspects will say or do anything to avoid being taken into custody. “I can’t breathe,” “You’re hurting me” and other laments are foisted on arresting officers all over America every day. Officers must rely on applying force within the law and within police department rules, not relenting every time a suspect complains of discomfort. Police training requires decisive and often aggressive action when resistance arises. Hesitation can be fatal.
“He didn’t deserve that,” O’Reilly concluded, and on that point he is right. But this is another departure from what grand juries actually consider.
This grand jury was not even called to evaluate the so-called “choke hold,” a matter not of law but of department policy. Even if that hold was used— and that is debated— it would expose Officer Pantaleo to professional sanction, not criminal prosecution.
In order to indict, the grand jury would have had to find reckless disregard for Garner’s safety, a fair expectation that the officers knew he could die, and perhaps even a callous disregard for that danger.
Finally, they would have had to find that the death was more attributable to police action than to Garner’s regrettable health.
The grand jury would have had to reach these conclusions not from feelings in the pit of their stomachs but from a clear-eyed expectation that such claims could be asserted in court beyond a reasonable doubt.
In their sincere judgment, that bar was not met. That is a judgment that deserves respect, even if it is in the form of respectful disagreement.
I do not want for one moment to adopt the suspicion harbored by some, that conservatives chastened by battles over Ferguson are feeling a responsibility clamor for an indictment in the Garner case in order to assert some ill-defined bona fides for even-handedness. I would never assert this about the three gentlemen mentioned here, whom I respect profoundly.
But their reactions are not sprung from the proper place for evaluating grand jury actions, in this case or any other. If we are going to lecture people about wandering away from the facts and the law in controversial arrest cases, we had best not take side trips ourselves.
Response of force should be proportionate to the crime. Instead of arresting him, he should have been given a ticket, max, and told to move on. Instead, a force of several police officers were called in, resulting in a violent take-down and the man’s death.
Was it murder? No, but it was clearly involuntary homicide, as their actions resulted in his death. If an individual that was not a police officer did the same thing, you can bet charges would have been filed.
They are in rebellion right now. During these times that are difficult, I often think of Romans 13: 1-7 of the reality of authority coming from God.
Great piece thanks for the thoughtful post
That would be my solution, too. I’m tired of white officers putting their lives on the line for the likes of a bunch of whiners who don’t step up to do the same .
See the problem is that small business do not get the respect they so very much need and deserve, that when folks hang around like that, they scare customers away.
And please let us not forget that there was a sergeant there who was directing officers as to what to do....SHE is an African American
fair enough
I don’t know where this notion that grand juries are infallible comes from. They get it wrong sometimes. They got it wrong in Garner.
Take it up with those small businesses that complained about Eric Garner to the police.
Mark Davis is an ass. I could never stand him when he filled in for Limbaugh.
Garner was a tragedy that could have been avoided if the cops had used some common sense. They are not trained for commons sense anymore. They are trained to use the most force available.
That was my initial reaction when I heard that he was being arrested for what was basically a tax violation.
Apparently there was more to it than just that. From what I've read, it was the local store owners who called the police to the scene -- not because he was selling untaxed cigarettes, but because he was harassing the customers entering the stores and strong-arming the store owners. If that was the case, then the police CANNOT simply give the guy a ticket and walk away.
If you watch the entire video, it's obvious from the beginning that the police officer and Garner know each other from Garner's prior legal troubles.
This might be an interesting case in which the grand jury refused to indict the cop because they think he did the neighborhood a huge favor.
> So is going 26 in a 25 zone...
And if you engage in a high speed attempt to evade arrest, all bets are off as to the outcome.
The problem was also that Gardner resisted arrest. With his lengthy arrest record he should have known the police could not turn their back on him, they had no choice. The arrest had to be made. The choke hold or full nelson are approved methods of subduing anyone resisting arrest.
Mind one thing, I mostly agree with you. However, a “regular citizen” is not expected to detain people or put themselves at risk doing so. If you confront someone and they turn aggressive, you walk away and call the police. LE doesn’t have this option, they HAVE to detain a lawbreaker in most cases. I understand that it’s a very difficult line to judge... what is proportionate force? It cannot be defined and every person will make different decisions based on circumstances... not to mention, we’ve had a lot of time to think about it, unlike the cops at the time. We also need to remember that this wasn’t the guys first offense, or even the first time he’d been in trouble for this same exact thing. I’m guessing he’s also resisted in the past, the cops know these things when they run your name, it’s in the notes. I’m obviously speculating here, but it’s all stuff we need to keep in mind when we watch the video. They may have also been there for 45 minutes trying to negotiate his surrender and that could have led to the large number of officers on the scene. We only get to see a minute or 2 of the interaction. Anyway, I’m still not taking the side of LE on this one, I’m just agreeing that there was no *criminal intent* here by the officers.
The problem with that scenario is that he had an outstanding warrant.
In the Ferguson case, I was glad the perp wound up dead because otherwise he would have lived to attack and rob more people. I think the officer responded appropriately.
In this case I’m sorry the guy is dead, but agree with the simplistic summary, “if you resist arrest bad things can happen”.
However, what does (and has always) concern me is the over regulation in the county.
Laws against murder, rape, and robbery, etc.. have been on the books since before the united states, but today we have tens of thousands of pages of laws and regulations, all of which may ulitmately end in a confrontation with a police officer.
So, for example, if someone doesn’t like you and puts in an anonymous false complaint to child protective services and the cops show up without a warrant and you refuse to let them in, you will get taken down.
If your speeding and happen not to have your license, the cop may decide to arrest you because he needs to positively identify you to give you the ticket. This too may result in confrontation.
One of the things that is complicating this in the mind of some is the statement the author makes about a “silly law “ referring to the law against selling “untaxed” cigarettes. The reason they are “untaxed,” however, is not because there is some special “untaxed” cigarette that these loosie sellers can sell, but because the cigarettes are either stolen or smuggled and are supplied by criminal rings - ranging from the mafia to jihadi groups - that obtain a lot of income from their sale of stolen or smuggled products (not only cigarettes, but they’re an easy one). Stealing a truckload of cigarettes for resale to people like Garner, who then resell them to people on the street in slum neighborhoods, is pretty easy money for them.
Cigarettes taxes may be too high, but that’s another issue. The “untaxed” cigarette is actually part of a much bigger criminal activity.
So that’s why there’s a law against selling them. In addition, activity of this type is treated as a quality of life violation in poor neighborhoods, since the presence of free-lance vendors hustling stolen or dubiously acquired products is an unpleasant feature of street life, attracts other lowlifes who buy them, provides a sort of backdrop for the sales of drugs, etc. This is why the neighbors object and want the situation cleaned up.
Finally, the legitimate merchants in the area, who have paid the full price and bought their cigarettes legally for resale, have a valid complaint about these vendors. In the case of Garner, he was selling his cigarettes right in front of the convenience store. In fact, he had been arrested several times for doing the same thing, so we can see how much fear of the police he had! Why he decided to resist arrest that time is a mystery, but he did, and the consequences were disproportional because of his health problems.
Actually the merchants who complained were minorities, the Sergeant on the scene supervising was black and the chief of that precinct is black. If there was any negligence or malfeasance, it definitely had no racial component!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.