Posted on 12/10/2014 12:14:35 PM PST by Kaslin
“I'm minding my business, officer,” pleads the man on the video. “Please just leave me alone.” Minutes later the man, confronted by police for allegedly selling “loose” cigarettes, would be placed in a chokehold and wrestled to the ground, eventually dying from injuries sustained by the restraint.
The video recording of Eric Garner’s death is deeply disturbing, and has once again stoked protests and fiery debates about police tactics and racial biases. However, focusing the anger and debate on racial bias or specific actions by individual police officers, misses the broader and far more important public policy issues raised by this case: the over-criminalization of our society, and the use of the law enforcement power of the state to regulate commercial actions and raise government revenues.
Make no mistake -- whether Garner was targeted because of his race and whether the officers who confronted him employed excessive or improper force, are important issues. And both should be debated and addressed within the context of civil and criminal laws and procedures.
But neither of these questions addresses the far more important issue of why we as a society have clothed police with the authority to consider it within their power to arrest someone for engaging in such a trivial act. Ultimately, it is not so much the police officers who should be the focus of this debate and of our concern; it is ourselves.
If left unanswered, the questions about over-criminalization and abuses of police power to regulate commercial activity and raise revenue, threaten to overwhelm the fundamental principle on which our nation was founded -- that government exists to protect Liberty. Unfortunately, what the Garner and so many other cases have come to reflect is the warped principle that the police power of the state exists to protect government.
How bad this problem has become is illustrated in the growth of the federal criminal code. Just three decades ago, a Justice Department study of the U.S. Code estimated there to be approximately 3,000 criminal offenses. In the years since, the Congress has added nearly 1,500 more crimes to the books. And this does not include the thousands of state and local offenses, or the thousands more regulatory edicts with which individuals and businesses are forced to comply.
While many Americans may believe it is easy to stay out of trouble with the law, and thus avoid confrontations with police, prominent civil rights attorney Harvey Silverglate notes in his seminal work, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, this is a myth. Silverglate’s well-documented research into abuses of police and prosecutorial powers establishes that there are so many different and confusing criminal and regulatory laws on the books, that the average person in America cannot make it through a normal day without running afoul of at least three government “gotchas.” As Silverglate correctly concludes, this is no accident. “As a civil liberties matter, a government which has the ability to prosecute innocent citizens at will, is a government which has achieved the power that has characterized all tyrannical governments throughout history,” says Silverglate.
As documented further by Silverglate, despite the sometimes trivial or often technical nature of offenses charged, the laws and regulations on which such prosecutions are based are sufficient to empower the government to use its vast law enforcement powers to control whoever they want whenever they want. This applies whether it is a single citizen attempting to sell something as innocuous as a cigarette on a street corner, or a physician who has prescribed to a patient more of a government-controlled drug than federal or state drug agents have decided is appropriate.
In a broad sense, and as philosopher and noted author Ayn Rand opined more than half a century ago, since there is no way to absolutely control free men, government simply declares so many things “illegal” that it makes it impossible for citizens not to break the law.
Back in the 1930s, federal agents had to spend seven years engaged in creative thinking and investigating in order to find a way to bring to heel Al Capone’s vast criminal empire; finally settling on the then-novel use of the federal tax code. In 21st Century America, federal agents can choose from a lengthy (and ever-expanding) menu of regulatory and criminal offenses on which to easily and quickly build a case against someone as big as an Al Capone or as small as an Eric Garner.
It is not only the incessant drive to control people and businesses that fuels the engine of over-criminalization. Government at all levels has become so big and so costly, that revenues are never deemed sufficient to meet those perceived “needs.” Hence, the drive to find ever more creative – and liberty-stifling – ways to bring in more revenues; such as outlawing the selling of a cigarette by one person to another as a way to ensure such “commercial transactions” are taxable and taxed.
This expansion of police and regulatory powers reflects the unhealthy crony relationship between businesses seeking favors through tax breaks or government-mandated monopolies; the violation of which then leads often to criminal prosecutions.
Ultimately, of course, it is we the people who elect and reelect to public office the legislators, governors and presidents who both expand and abuse the powers to which their oaths of office were sworn. Let us not squander the current opportunity to seriously debate and reform these fundamental problems, by refusing to see the forest for the trees.
Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner all make crappy poster children for the causes that have sprung up from their deaths - which those pushing the causes almost universally ignore.
If Trayvon had simply gone home instead of doubling back to attack George Zimmerman, he would still be alive.
If Michael Brown had not attacked and then charged Darrin Wilson, and instead had just gotten on the ground, he would still be alive.
If Eric Garner had not resisted arrest, triggering his own health problems in doing such, he would still be alive.
And that is why they are polarizing figures. Regular people holding regular jobs, who bother to get the facts, realize that in the end all three men were responsible for their own deaths. That does not change the fact that cops sometimes unfairly target honest blacks for no reason (I have seen such myself) or that the nanny state criminalizes and over-taxes way too many things. But tying this issues to such flawed persons will fail in the end to give these issues long-term traction.
Video recording of his death? I thought he died of a heart attack in an ambulance. Was the paramedic videotaping him?
BOTH the deaths of Brown and Garner can be directly tied to their involvement with tobacco.
One common spiritual principal is the need to manage one’s own desires.
The “victims” in these cases failed to incorporate that in their lives, and as a result are no longer with the living.
Any attempt to cast fault elsewhere, is pure political theater.
You are exactly correct on every point.
I would like to further add that it is next to impossible to convict police officers in instances involving resisting arrest. We have seen this here in CA in several notable cases. Recall the first Rodney King trial, the jurors sided with the police officers. Recall the incident in Fullerton when a homeless man died, the jury again sided with police. In both cases, suspects were resisting arrest. In such cases the police are required to use force and unfortunately in some of those instances death can result. In these cases, usually intent is the biggest factor for the jurors.
If Michael Brown had not been walking down the middle of the street, provoking a confrontation with motorists, Darin Wilson would not have asked him to get out of the street. And he would not have been shot. Actions have consequences.
Travon Martin-> Got exactly what he was asking for.
The Gentle Giant-> Ditto
But the guy in NYC,while he could be said to be partially responsible for what happened (resisting),it must be acknowledged that at least one of the cops,if not more,acted recklessly...irresponsibly.I'm *not* saying criminally.If I was on a jury hearing a criminal case against the cops I'd very probably vote not guilty.But if I was a juror hearing a civil case against the NYPD I'd very probably vote to give the family serious $$$...whereas I'd never vote for *any* conviction,or civil award,in either of the other two cases
Just as the Gentle Giant died shouting “Hands up, Don’t Shoot”; Garner was also choked to death.
(If one is stupid enough to believe the presstitutes)
Have you got your t-shirt yet? I bet you wear it with pride.
Eric Garner Died Over a Cigarette Tax
_________________________________________
Riiight.
And Michael Brown died over jaywalking.
Not that they were contributors, obesity, asthma, probably diabetic. Bottom line, cigs kill. (Did I say that? Guess it’s time to go in the garage and fire up a marlboro.)
You are exactly right! He was not placed in a “choke hold.” The hold lasted a total of 17 seconds. At second 14, Mr. Garner, who was resisting, said “I can’t breathe.” 3 seconds later, nothing was around his neck. EMS was called immediately after Mr. Garner saying he couldn’t breathe.
Approximately 3 minutes later, EMS arrives. At around 4:30 of the second video, Mr. Garner repeats, “I can’t breathe.” At approximately minute 7:30, he is wheeled away.
In the ambulance, on the way to the hospital, he experienced cardiac arrest and expired.
He was neither asphyxiated, nor strangled (choked). The autopsy reveals no damage to the windpipe or neck.
I worked in the ER of a major hospital for 20 years. I think it's distinctly possible that I know more about death...maybe even *much* more...than you.
Fer Pete’s sake, it’s not the tax. Everybody pays many taxes on cigarettes - federal, state and local - because this is what is called a “sin tax.” The governments know that they can tax purely pleasure products, ranging from perfumes to alcohol to cigarettes, very high because people don’t need them to stay alive but most people do want them.
NYC has high taxes overall, and the cigarette tax (which amounts to $1.46 per pack, on top of the high NY State tax and the Federal taxes which amount to about $5.00 a pack) is too high. But everybody in New York has to pay it, and if they don’t like it, they should protest.
The reason Garner’s cigarettes were “tax free” is that they were either stolen or bootlegged (huge market in contraband and counterfeit products from abroad that come in through JFK and other ports of entry) by the Mafia, jihadi groups or some other organized crime group, such as the Black Panthers or the Nation of Islam. Truckdrivers have been killed in cigarette heists by these groups.
Garner had something like 18 arrests for selling “tax free” cigarettes, and was thought to be part of a stolen cigarette ring - probably Mafia related, since this was Staten Island and the local Mafia is in with the black mafia - that intimidated local business owners to make them buy their stolen cigarettes or shook them down for protection money or posted themselves outside the doors of the legitimate businesses where they could hiss “smoke, smoke,” and sell their (stolen or smuggled) item at half the price the legitimate business owner had had to pay.
Garner had done this several times before at the same location because the Indian owner would not give in and sell his stolen cigarettes.
Lower taxes would be a good thing. So write to your representatives, protest to the mayor and the governor, and work to lower them.
But if everybody has to pay them, then that’s how it is, and there’s no special black person’s exemption. And, incidentally, if the prices are higher in a ghetto convenience store, that’s because the owner’s insurance, if he can get it, is sky-high and he has to pay for the cost of shoplifting, robberies, welfare fraud... and bootleg cigarette selling outside his front door.
I don’t think Eric Garner ever did a legal day’s work in his life, because for that you actually have to show up every day or most days and be in physical condition to do your job (he wasn’t in physical condition to actually do much of anything except hiss “smoke, smoke”). And I don’t think he would have...his wife sounded pretty pissed, btw!
How does your ER experience coincide with your desire to give taxpayer money away to the family of a thug/punk/mobster/carreer criminal who was solely responsible for his own death?
the cops let so many things slide....so many big crimes....they can't get dna tests on rape kits done in a timely manner yet we have the money to send several cops to take down a loser selling cigarettes?
priorities...
So was the arrest and the cops action during it, following “the book” or in scope .. or did the cop go “rogue” and out of line?.....
Because none of the supervising cops there stop the actions....why didn't the step if this one cop was out of line? There were right there in charge so are just as liable if someone under them did something wrong.an the wathched an did nothing..
And if then all follow proper policy.. and something went wrong then the policy should be look at ...if the cops did there job by the book and you have a problem with it..look at the book ...
Exactly.
The fact that Garner was selling bootleg cigarettes at the time of his arrest is neither here nor there. It is irrelavent.
Suppose it were the 1920s and he was selling bootleg liquor. We may disagree with the law at that was in force at that time.
The relevant fact is that Garner resisted arrest. Ditto with Brown. And for those who think this only happens to blacks, let me refer you to the case in Fullerton, where the jury sided with police officers who killed a homeless man who just happened to be white but was also resisting arrest.
All the other facts are moot, even whether the cop was wrong......... Eric died because he resisted detention.
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