Posted on 12/07/2014 3:50:38 AM PST by Kaslin
Eric Garner died in July because he resisted arrest, forcing police to take him down the way they take down thousands of suspects daily. Only Garner wasn’t an average suspect. He had allowed himself to become morbidly obese and had diabetes, heart disease and who knows what other self-imposed health problems. Still, he never should have died that summer day.
Big government killed Eric Garner. Police were just the weapon.
Garner was selling “illegal cigarettes” that day, or “loosies” – individual cigarettes from a pack. Why would anyone buy individual cigarettes? Because government, in this case New York, both city and state, have, through exorbitant taxation, made buying a whole pack too expensive for many.
Government’s heavy hand incentivized the creation of a black market for cigarettes. But government’s heavy hand also made selling cigarettes outside of its approved, and taxed, avenues a crime. Government, like the mafia, doesn’t like competition. The mafia will execute you; the government will arrest you.
In Garner’s case, he resisted that arrest and died because his body could not tolerate the force he brought on himself from police. But the police would not have been there had progressive officials and activists not made what Garner was doing into a crime.
Had reselling cigarettes, individually or in packs, not been criminalized by a government wanting its “taste of the action,” Eric Garner still would be alive.
Police have better things to do with their time, more important crimes to investigate, than selling cigarettes individually. But, unlike the newly discovered powers of the president to pick and choose which laws to enforce, when cops get a call, they have to respond—no matter how stupid they may think the “crime” is.
The race-baiting progressives saw an opening in the Garner case and took it. The media, either unwilling or incapable of seeing their philosophy caused this and many other deaths and arrests, followed their lead and made this story about race. Garner is still dead, and repealing the laws that led to his death isn’t even being discussed.
Neither Mayor Bill De Blasio, President Obama nor Attorney General Eric Holder killed Eric Garner. Progressive governance that criminalizes everyday activities did. And so did Garner himself. He didn’t deserve to die by any stretch of the imagination, but he did it to himself.
Not the selling of “loosies.” He didn’t create the stupid law he was breaking, but he resisted arrest. Once he started flailing his arms, he sealed his fate.
If you watch the video, the officer did not put Garner in a “chokehold.” He hooked under his right armpit and around his neck. That is a restraint, not a chokehold. Garner’s right arm was incapacitated, leaving the others to deal with only his left arm. Garner’s decision to continue to struggle caused the officer to lose his grip, which he re-established around his neck.
The officer was perfectly in the right to do that as Garner was fighting, not complying. Letting him go at that moment would’ve put every officer involved in danger. It wasn’t held long, and it wouldn’t have happened at all had Garner, who was no stranger to police or arrest, not caused it to happen.
It’s an inconvenient truth, and a truth very few people want to admit. But it’s a truth nonetheless.
But the deeper truth still holds—it was progressive big government, the overregulation and taxation of everything—that was the first domino to fall in the events that caused Eric Garner’s death.
Over just this weekend, you more than likely will commit a half-dozen crimes of some sort or other. The book “Three Felonies a Day” by Harvey Silverglate, a civil liberties attorney in Boston, explains how over-criminalization and over-regulation has made us all criminals. It’s just a matter of luck that we haven’t encountered someone who knows the obscure corners of the law and/or is inclined to call the police to report us.
The real tragedy of the Garner case is that what he was doing was a crime in the first place. If there’s no oppressive progressive government seeping into all aspects of our lives, there’s no crime committed and no encounter with the police. This fact is lost on the progressives in power, or ignored by them. Individuals don’t matter to progressives beyond their ability to be used as props. Individuals are expendable.
The saddest part of the Garner affair is that the lesson from his death won’t be to roll back the laws that led to the ending of his life, but many of the willfully ignorant, unwashed (and un-showered) masses will embrace the mantra that more government is needed.
The president already has started to push the idea of more federal involvement in local policing. The mayor of New York is pushing “re-education” of the police so they can “better” interact with minority communities. That sounds an awful lot like “separate but equal” application of the law. Black people have different melanin levels, they aren’t a different species. But to progressives they might as well be.
It’s a sick, sad “soft bigotry of low expectations” that would make Goebbels blush. Goebbels famously said, “The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”
But the deeper truth still holds—it was progressive big government, the overregulation and taxation of everything—that was the first domino to fall in the events that caused Eric Garner’s death.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Bears repeating. We have to get the ba$tard$ out of our lives.
BTTT
still a criminal.
I am as big an opponent of government control via taxation as anyone, but even if cigarettes went back down to the fifty cents a pack of my youth, Garner still would have found a way to get himself arrested. Maybe he would have sold drugs or robbed a convenience store or mugged an old lady. It’s not like he was going to become a C.P.A. or a Master Mechanic.
Smoke ‘em if ya gottem!
$5.85 per pack tax in N.Y.C.
While the guy assisted in his own demise, cops are very quick to interpret any hesitation in total obedience as a reason to use overwhelming force or to pull a trigger - this race-as-the-reason crap hides a real problem by keeping the divisions bloody and raw.
Omitted is why was Garner having to sell cigarettes to make a living? No job? Additional blame can be added to 0bamacare which makes the work week 30 hours, 29 in reality. And, who would hire Garner anyway, given his state of health?
Just one more reason progressives get people killed.
What happened to 3 strikes and you’re out? We need a few penal colonies for 4th time offenders. Enough of their living among the civilized. Let them live with like-kind.
In addition to Congress we have fifty state legislatures. Every day they wake up wondering what more they can do today. More laws, more control. Then there are the regulatory agencies. None of these people think of what power and control they can give up.
Criminalize everything and you criminalize everybody. Then everybody is under your control.
11 Facts About the Eric Garner Case the Media Won’t Tell You
Sources in the mainstream media expressed outrage after a grand jury declined to indict a New York City policeman in the death of Eric Garner, but there are 11 significant facts that many of them have chosen to overlook:
1. There is no doubt that Garner was resisting an arrest for illegally selling untaxed cigarettes. Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik put it succinctly: “You cannot resist arrest. If Eric Garner did not resist arrest, the outcome of this case would have been very different,” he told Newsmax. “He wouldn’t be dead today.
“Regardless of what the arrest was for, the officers don’t have the ability to say, ‘Well, this is a minor arrest, so we’re just going to ignore you.’”
2. The video of the July 17 incident clearly shows Garner, an African-American, swatting away the arms of a white officer seeking to take him into custody, telling him: “Don’t touch me!”
3. Garner, 43, had history of more than 30 arrests dating back to 1980, on charges including assault and grand larceny.
4. At the time of his death, Garner was out on bail after being charged with illegally selling cigarettes, driving without a license, marijuana possession and false impersonation.
5. The chokehold that Patrolman Daniel Pantaleo put on Garner was reported to have contributed to his death. But Garner, who was 6-foot-3 and weighed 350 pounds, suffered from a number of health problems, including heart disease, severe asthma, diabetes, obesity, and sleep apnea. Pantaleo’s attorney and police union officials argued that Garner’s poor health was the main cause of his death.
6. Garner did not die at the scene of the confrontation. He suffered cardiac arrest in the ambulance taking him to the hospital and was pronounced dead about an hour later.
7. Much has been made of the fact that the use of chokeholds by police is prohibited in New York City. But officers reportedly still use them. Between 2009 and mid-2014, the Civilian Complaint Review Board received 1,128 chokehold allegations.
Patrick Lynch, president of the New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said: “It was clear that the officer’s intention was to do nothing more than take Mr. Garner into custody as instructed, and that he used the takedown technique that he learned in the academy when Mr. Garner refused.”
8. The grand jury began hearing the case on Sept. 29 and did not reach a decision until Wednesday, so there is much testimony that was presented that has not been made public.
9. The 23-member grand jury included nine non-white jurors.
10. In order to find Officer Pantaleo criminally negligent, the grand jury would have had to determine that he knew there was a “substantial risk” that Garner would have died due to the takedown.
11. Less than a month after Garner’s death, Ramsey Orta, who shot the much-viewed videotape of the encounter, was indicted on weapons charges. Police alleged that Orta had slipped a .25-caliber handgun into a teenage accomplice’s waistband outside a New York hotel.
Also not mentioned. . .the cops were called in by black-owned merchants who were being undercut by Garner’s cigarette sales in front of their stores. He had been arrested 30 times for the same thing. . .all prompted by complaints from the merchants. Another thing not mentioned by the race hustlers and the media. . .the Police Sargent-on-scene was a black woman and the precinct Captain, a black man.
Maybe so, but I don't think that is necessarily the case here.
What we do know is this:
1. The police weren't just out for a stroll, looking for violent, dangerous (sarcasm off) tobacco pirates out there. They were called to the scene by the owner of the store, who complained that this Garner guy was harassing his customers and employees.
2. The dispatcher didn't send one or two officers to the scene. There were four officers dispatched to the scene, because they knew in advance that they were dealing with someone who was not likely to be cooperative.
3. They knew this because this Garner guy was a real veteran of the criminal justice system. He had more than 30 arrests on his record, and was still out on bail while awaiting trial for his most recent arrest.
The last point probably explains why he was so hostile to the police. If he was arrested and taken into custody, his bail on the prior charge probably would have been revoked.
I don't know if the police were right or wrong in this case, but I'm sure Garner's prior history gave the grand jury (and maybe even the prosecutor) every reason to give the cops the benefit of the doubt.
Nice argument until it gets here:”Letting him go at that moment would’ve put every officer involved in danger.”
THAT is laughable.
Maybe, maybe not
I keep hearing that. What were the "crimes" he was arrested for? Was there a conviction on any of them?
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.