I’ve been thinking mostly the same. I’ll openly admit, I have issues with the methods used by police and have always noted they don’t seem to much care how much injury they are causing so I am somewhat biased, admittedly. Most times, pepper spray is just as effective. However, the “if you can talk, you can breath” is somewhat misleading. If your throat is closed off, you can’t speak obviously true. However, if you have a couple of 200 pound men with their knees in your back, you can’t inhale, but you can exhale and produce strained speech for a while. You may also be able to intake a small amount of air, but not enough to stay conscious for long. Your diaphragm simply isn’t strong enough to work against the weigh at a certain point. Granted, some sort of force was necessary in this case, but I do believe it was excessive... not counting the fact that this probably would NOT have killed a normal person, this guy had medical issues that more than likely added to enough to cause the death (just as pepper spray might have to be hones, asthma was a factor). I just don’t believe a knee to the back and a knee on someone’s head is proportional reaction at least until other methods have been exhausted and are no other choices. I mean really, how fast or far could this guy have ran?
I agree 100% with your assessment of this situation. It has to do with “proportional” reaction by the police. Had this man been suspected of being a “dangerous” criminal, perhaps such a “take-down” would have been considered reasonable and proportional.
However, the police knew who they were dealing with (a petty criminal with no history of being “dangerous”, as far as I know) as he had been arrested several times in the past for illegally selling cigarettes. It’s also illegal to jaywalk, litter the sidewalk, drive 40mph in a 35mph area, solicit prostitution, loitering, panhandling and any number of relatively minor infractions of the law.
Proportionality of the police response is the one and only issue here, and it seems to be an inappropriate response. I’m not talking about whether the Grand Jury’s decision was correct, or incorrect, as that’s a different discussion. Had the response been proportional, the Grand Jury would have never been involved as the man would not have lost his life in a “take-down” in the first place.
To me, it matters not whether this response is a common or accepted practice. It needs to be an uncommon one and deemed unacceptable.