I just missed a bus Saturday. I knew from its route that it would hit red lights and I could probably run it down. Twenty years ago I would not have given it a second thought. Now, in my fifties, with hypertension, it would be inviting a heart attack. So I waited for the next one. I took into account my own knowledge of my health before I acted. And I can walk just fine, walk several miles a day. Garner could hardly walk a block.
The cops did not kill Garner. His own decision to resist arrest did. He knew he was in poor health. The cops didn't, they just saw a large man resisting arrest and used just enough force to get him on the ground, hardly a mauling. But a short wrestling match puts a tremendous strain on the body.
One can fairly debate NY cig taxes and laws, but, according to Garner's own wife, he was lazy. If smokes weren't taxed into the black market, he would probably have just found some other way to make money in another black market. And he had been arrested for selling single smokes before, so he knew full well why he was being arrested.
Garner is yet another case of the anti-cop and pro-race-card factions making a poor choice of poster child. And I am not pro cop - with Brown and Garner, I waited for the facts to come out. The facts showed both men, like Trayvon, made poor choices that contributed directly to their deaths. But with Garner, no one applied lethal force - his own heart did him in.
Sorry, but it appears most are missing step 0: Over-bearing/over-reaching/intrusive GOV’T.
The man died over TAXES, as the State must make sure to get ‘its piece of the pie’. That is NYC. Those cops had everything else under control/no other higher-level infractions? They couldn’t just give another option: knock it off OR go to jail? If ANYONE has ‘prosecutorial discretion’, it’s the cops...
But no, “Oh, he’s a repeats LOOSE seller...The HORROR”. And, yes, when ever ANYONE has their forearm across a neck (or pair of hands), that’s a choke hold in my book; as much as touching an officer with a FINGER constitutes assault. Some animals are NOT more equal than others!