Posted on 12/05/2014 8:04:57 AM PST by KeyLargo
December 03, 2014
So Like Everyone On the Right is Now Outraged by the Garner Death Just Like They Were Outrage by the "Militarization of Police" in Ferguson
I'm a dissenter.
Frankly, I think everyone on the right is looking to prove "We're not one of those sorts of people who automatically defends anyone who kills a black person."
And we did that in three Racial Incidents running. I know my first reaction in both Trayvon Martin's case, and in Michael Brown's case, was to side with the black victim.
And maybe this is the wrong time to put my foot down, but I've been suckered twice, and I won't be suckered a third time.
Did Eric Garner deserve to die? No. The crime that began all this was selling "Loosies," single cigarettes out of the pack, in defiance of the state tobacco tax laws and all the other nonsense laws they throw on people about only selling things in their original packaging. Minor sh_t. Nonsense.
And yet, he defied police orders when they attempted to arrest them. When they tried to cuff him, he defied them again, pulling his arms away. He decided, as a Jury of One, that the law was silly and he would not be being arrested today.
I can't entirely blame him for feeling that way, but I know that if the police attempt to arrest you for a law which you are in fact breaking, even if you think it's a minor harassing sort of law, you do not have the right to resist arrest.
What followed is what follows in all resisting-arrest cases: some escalating violence as the police attempt to physically impose their will on the noncompliant suspect.
Some number of such situations will result in the death of the suspect.
I guess I just don't understand how we say this guy is guilty of manslaughter, given that in almost all cases where a guy's heart just gives out in a struggle, we could find some error in procedure as a hook to throw the guy in jail for.
This is a tragedy, in my mind. Eric Garner wasn't much of a criminal threat, and the police did seem too eager to use force.
Nevertheless, we actually pay them to use force when a law-breaking suspect (even one breaking a trivial law) resists arrest. That is the job we've given them.
To say this guy is guilty of murder or manslaughter seems to me to be a case of scapegoating the people we've tasked with implementing a policy that we have imposed ourselves.
If trivial laws should not provide grounds for arrest, We should change the laws to say so.
If cops should just let a non-compliant but non-felony suspect go if he resists arrest, we should make that officially part of their job description.
We did something similar -- wrongly, I think, but we did it-- when we made it police policy to let felony flight cases just drive away, rather than engage in a high-speed chase. (Except when cops suspect a major felony.)
Now, if we're keeping the laws as they are, and sending out cops to enforce piece-of-sh_t minor laws and arrest people rather than cite them with a ticket, that's on us.
And we have to accept that out of every 10,000 or so arrests, there are going to be some deaths. Some deaths will be the kind where we can definitely say the cop was culpable and committed a great crime.
Others, however, will simply be the result of mistakes and misfortunes, and will be due to decisions we have made as a society every bit as they are the fault of the officer executing our policy.
This just doesn't look like murder to me. Or manslaughter. It's not like the cops wanted to be there. We were paying them to have this encounter. Having this encounter was the duty we charged them with.
The definition of a scapegoat is an individual made to suffer for decisions made by the group.
I'm tired of all the scapegoating of late.
Objection: Inspector Cussword takes strong exception to my attempt to read his mind and his True Beliefs, in claiming that people on the right just want to get on the liberal side on one of these cases.
That's fair. I shouldn't have done that.
That said, in three situations running, I have seen many people on the right take the "liberal" side of the argument initially.
It does seem to be a pattern.
It could be that this is, as I suggested, the wrong time for me to decide I won't be hoodwinked. I have to confess, I saw this video of Eric Garner's killing a long time ago, and my impression when I saw it was -- Sh_t, that is a callous thing I just saw, which resulted in a man's death.
But I guess I'm just sick of being bamboozled by a media that reports only one side of these cases, and the Mob's pressurizing of all comers to Join the Mob.
I may be reacting too quickly here -- in the opposite direction.
Well, I'll keep an open mind.
But what I reject is this idea that if a man dies, there must be a criminal violation.
That's simply way false. There are situations in which a homicide (all deaths caused by men are homicides, whether crimes or not) are legal.
Self-defense (Trayvon Martin) is one such case.
Effecting a lawful arrest is another.
Without something I can look at and feel, in my gut, When that guy did that, he was acting so far out of bounds he's guilty of the most serious crime that exists, I'm inclined to resist the quick judgment.
I agree in the Garner case, the question of why should the police be tasked with enforcing all of these lib laws, ordinances created by the likes of DeBlasio?
The politicians might as well create some sort of meter maid army to hand out tickets, considering all that the Democrats really want is revenue.
The breaking of a “trivial law” evaporates when someone advances to “resisting arrest”. Once again, the law breaker made a stupid decision, which to me seems little different from the stupid decisions that occurred in the other two cases. I think we all regret the outcome, but I sure cannot blame the police. Imagine the landscape without them.
Cig taxes to blame! Just lookin’ at the plain clothes/undercover cops, maybe this guy thought that it was some gangsta’s tryin’ to muscle in on his turf. Believe it or not, there are fake badges out there. And plenty of handcuffs. Were the cops known by this guy from previous interactions? They obviously knew of him. Hands down. Pants up. Comply now. Complain later.
BLACK FEMALE Police Sergeant Supervised Eric Garner’s Deadly Arrest
Imagine if he had been holding a 64 ounce Slurpee.
Outraged? More like indifferently sitting back and observing the idiotic sideshow.
Stupid nanny-state laws, stupid criminal moron, stupid white yuppie protesters shouting “hands up” and getting down with the bruthas.
Don’t care that Fatso is dead. And NYC, which embraced Obama, commie DeBlasio, and homo-marriage, can just go burn to the ground as far as I care.
Although I see the argument that the arrest was over a goofy law and it is absolutely a waste of police resources, I am really not happy with that argument.
Regardless of its source, the law is on the books. And, Garner *knew* about the law, since of his prior 30 or 31 arrests (are you freaking kidding me? 30 prior arrests? How much is that in resources?) at least ONE was for the same deed.
It is the country we live in, it is part of our society that we are a nation of laws and not men or not something else. At least in theory. I absolutely feel for the guy trying to make a buck or two selling cigs. But this flaunting of the law, this ignoring the law, is something his spiritual and political leader, Dear Leader, does on such a regular basis that we have come to expect it of him. And now he is about to ratify the disregarding of the law on the part of millions of illegals. This is very, very destructive. It is possible and desirable and admirable to have any amount of discussion over whether we should change the law according to the specified means of changing the law, but in the case of immigration, the perforce blast the law out of legitimacy by sheer force of numbers is total anarchy and a systematic assault on societal ethics. I don’t mean to sound so preachy. But of all the trivial crap that offends people so masively, like the name of a football team or whether it’s Taco Day at some sorority or whether there’s a Nativity scene on the front lawn of City Hall, this relentless assault on our values by way of nullifying and ignoring laws is a hundred times worse.
There have always been mafias and gangs who were able to establish and preserve their societal or economic advantage over others by force or by dint of numbers of cohorts. But now we have a so-called leader who thinks this is his mission in life. And for those without a strong moral sense, whether by upbringing or they are indeed scumbags, a really crappy example is being set and it makes rule-followers feel like suckers. That is a formula for a societal breakdown.
I’m amazed at all the supposed conservatives calling for the cop’s head. Maybe they’re trying to make up for Ferguson and get in good with the left. They should be blaming whatever government agency made it a crime to sell lose cigs. BTW, I read that the reason the cops were there was that the store owners complained about the cig seller was blocking their entrance.
I was on Zimmerman’s side in the Martin case.
I was on neither side in the Brown case — I think Darren Wilson screwed up, but I also think Brown was an idiot that worked things just right to get himself killed. I’m glad Wilson will no longer be a police officer.
The money shot in this article is the comment about enforcing B-—it laws. There is far too much of that going around. If this continues, everything will be against the law, which effectively means that no behavior is forbidden, just actionable for sanction by our rulers.
Garner, well, the thing that troubles me about that is the use of the chokehold, which has been banned by several police departments around the country due to the potential for physical restraint to turn lethal. That is not even taking into account that most of our local, state, and federal agencies, whether they carry guns or not, are looking at us more and more like they are an occupying army and we are enemies that need to be pacified. That is the largest issue for me and as usual, not even being discussed.
DeBlasio would say “we had to kill him to save him.”
Obama and most on the Left and many on the Right want a Federal Police Force to replace all local local law enforcement. That should solve the concerns of many on the Left and Right that believe the police are paid murderers.
By Tribune wire reports
Lawmaker wants Ferguson police force dissolved
The U.S. congressman for Ferguson, Missouri, said on Thursday he hopes the Justice Department disbands the city’s police department after the recent shooting of Michael Brown, and turns law enforcement duties over to St. Louis County Police.
Representative Lacy Clay, a Democrat, said he believes the Aug. 9 shooting of Brown by Ferguson officer Darren Wilson is only one example of the mostly white department’s “oppressive” treatment of blacks.
Was a choke hold the only and proper resort at the time?
There is way too much confrontation with, and not enough consideration of, citizens by cops in my 53 years of experience on this earth.
Bluntly: Cops behave like thugs.
I hate that.
Cops have EARNED their reputation as all-purpose general a-holes.
“I think Darren Wilson screwed up”
Can you elaborate?
So this guy has allegedly been arrested 30 or more times in the past, in basically the same location, and was resisting arrest. Gee, he wasn’t killed anytime before this so 30 to 1 odds against it being a racial motive, right?
“Was a choke hold the only and proper resort at the time?”
I was thinking taser but that would have probably knocked out the guys ticker as well.
This is almost another Rodney king. The video shows the take down already in progress but not what came before it.
if the officer had actually choked the man to death I would agree with the protestors on this one.
BUT, that’s not what happened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-xHqf1BVE4
1:39 choke hold is applied
1:46 is taken to the ground (note the arm sticking out starts to spasm *heart attack*)
1:54 says “I can’t breathe for the first time”
1:55 released from choke hold
Garner died later in the ambulance on the way to the hospital of cardiac arrest.
Those are the FACTS.
He was NOT, repeat NOT choked to death! anyone who says that is lying!
One thing conservatives aren't bringing up is that these protests are being allowed to go on, creating environments where people aren't safe. But, mygosh, it was just a year ago that the gov was forcibly removing law-abiding citizens from OUR parks and monuments, including Veterans from memorials to their service.
Garner’s “crime” was selling single untaxed cigarettes so why was there a need to arrest him at all? Couldn’t he just be issued a ticket or summons? Is selling untaxed single cigarettes a now a felony crime in New York that requires arrest? To me it was ludicrous to even arrest the man. That said he did resist arrest, but from the video I question whether the police acted properly.
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