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.
Plus in the Rodney King trial, the police were following current policy To The Letter. That video still makes me cringe and seems wrong to me, but if I’d been on that jury, I would have voted the same way.
I haven’t watched the Garner footage but I’m sure it’d give me the same horrible feeling in my gut — however, I am not going to tell the cops they can’t arrest people who are in fragile health, and I have no better suggestions on how to deal with that situation. Likely I would have voted the same way on that one as well, since I would assume the jury grappled with that situation and judged it based on Standard Procedure, which seems the reasonable approach to me.
I see a lot of these arguments coming from the same place as “we ought to be able to eliminate death from cause x entirely” sort of things. But even on that front, people pick and choose. Swimming pools cause more accidental deaths than guns, but nobody’s out there demanding the elimination of swimming pools. Cars and high speeds cause more accidental deaths than anything, but notice how lowering the national speed limit to 55 went. Life is risk, and Garner was the one with the knowledge and the ability to minimize the risk of that situation. He chose not to, and that isn’t the fault of the arresting officers.