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!
You will get no arguement from me on any of that and I have no reason to believe that it would have gone down any differently had Garner been while. I don't think it was a racial issuse, I think was only an excessive force issue.