I can't breathe!
Posted on 12/12/2014 8:07:34 AM PST by upchuck
Eric Garner, a 43 year-old father of six, is dead. This is a tragedy, regardless of the circumstances. We rightly mourn with his wife and children. They will never see their husband and father again, and that should break everyone’s heart.
When we witness a gut-rending tragedy like this, we want to know who is responsible. Who is to blame for depriving this family of its husband and father? As the facts emerge, it becomes increasingly clear that, as tragic as this situation is, in the end the culpability for Eric Garner’s death rests with Eric Garner.
To put it as simply as possible, if Mr. Garner had not broken the law and then resisted arrest, he would be alive today.
While protesters are trying to make this about race, it must be noted that the police showed up in response to complaints from black business owners. The arrest was ordered by a black officer, and the arrest itself was supervised by a black officer, a female sergeant.
A crackdown on the sale of illegal, untaxed cigarettes - called “loosies” since they are sold in singles rather than in packs - had been ordered just days before Garner’s arrest by the highest ranking black police officer in the NYPD, Philip Banks.
So a black officer ordered the crackdown, black business owners called for the arrest, a black officer ordered the arrest, and a black officer supervised the arrest itself. It’s also worth noting that the 23-member grand jury which refused to indict the arresting officer included nine non-white members. Ask yourself how many of those facts you have heard from any member of the race-obsessed, low-information media.
Garner had been arrested 31 times, and eight of those had been for selling loosies. His rap sheet goes back decades and includes arrests for assault and grand larceny.
At the time of his death, Garner was out on bail after being charged with multiple offenses, including illegal sale of cigarettes, marijuana possession, false impersonation and driving without a license.
So he certainly knew the law, knew he was in violation, and knew doing it again would likely lead to his arrest, a drill he’d been through dozens of times before.
There were 228,000 misdemeanor arrests in New York City in 2013, the last year for which figures are available. All of them put together led to precisely zero deaths.
Garner, all six-foot, three inches and 350 pounds of him, clearly resisted arrest, swatting away the arresting officer’s hands while loudly exclaiming, “Don’t touch me!” After he was taken to the ground, he growled, “This ends here!” That could be taken any number of ways, but in the heat of the moment it certainly could be read reasonably as a declaration that he was going to fight arrest until he was subdued by compelling force.
The patrolman who wrestled Garner to the ground, Daniel Pantaleo, did it by the book, using a takedown maneuver every policeman is taught at the academy. He did not, in fact, use a chokehold, which is defined by the NYPD as “any pressure to the throat or windpipe, which may prevent or hinder breathing or reduce intake of air.” Now Garner was clearly able to breathe, since that’s the only way he could repeatedly say, “I can’t breathe.”
The autopsy explicitly declares that there was no injury to Garner’s windpipe or to his neck bones. This was a wrestler’s headlock, not a chokehold. (As a sidenote, chokeholds, while contrary to police policy, are not in fact illegal in the state of New York when an officer uses one to restrain a resisting subject. They are not even illegal in New York City, at the insistence of liberal mayor Bill DeBlasio.) Patrolman Pantaleo was not indicted for the simple reason that he did nothing wrong.
Garner’s death likely should be attributed to the fact that he himself suffered from severe asthma, something the arresting officers had no reason to know. According to Garner’s friends, his asthma was severe enough that he was forced to quit his job as horticulturist for the city. He wheezed when he talked and could not walk so much as a city block without having to stop to rest. Garner “couldn’t breathe” because of his asthma, not because of a chokehold.
In addition, he suffered from heart disease, advanced diabetes, hypertension, obesity and sleep apnea. Contrary to public perception, he did not die on site, nor did he die of asphyxiation. He suffered cardiac arrest in the ambulance and was declared dead about an hour later at the hospital.
So it turns out that almost everything bleated out by the race-mongers and the low-information media has turned out to be wrong. As the wisest man who ever lived wrote 3000 years ago, “The one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17).
Eric Garner and Michael Brown both fought the law, and the law won. In the end, they have no one to blame but themselves.
New York Post columnist Bob McMcanus concluded his column on Eric Garner this way:
“There are many New Yorkers — politicians, activists, trial lawyers, all the usual suspects — who will now seek to profit from a tragedy that wouldn’t have happened had Eric Garner made a different decision.
“He was a victim of himself. It’s just that simple.”
Yeah, sure, the cops should have sensed he had asthma and severe heart disease before carrying out what normally would have been a mundane arrest. Gotcha.
“Garner had been arrested 31 times
“I’m interested to know how many of the 31 others arrests he resisted? I guess number 32 was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Perhaps he should have chosen a different career.”
IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW THE REAL ERIC GARNER THINK AGAIN
Liberals always think they are the smartest people in every room. They and their puppet media believe cops are dumb Neanderthals just “itching to kill a ni**er.”
Think again you smug fools; Cops are smarter than you think they are.
The material that follows comes from the police officers who had to deal with Eric Garner and knew what he was. It was supplied by police sources to the site Gotnews.com which is the only site interested in the truth.
What this material proves is that those who are beating their breast about the death of Eric Garner and insisting the cops should have been indicted ought to think before they speak.
“Street thug Eric Garner had at least eight domestic incident reports filed against him, including several for unwanted sexual touching.”
“One of them even involved throwing his newborn grandchild and his daughter out of his car,” NYPD sources told Gotnews.com.
“Under New York law, domestic incident reports are filed whenever the police are forced to respond to a domestic altercation. No charges may be filed by the victim, but police are still duty bound to report and catalog it.”
“In 2009 [Garner] was arrested for forcible touching of the genitals [of a victim].”
“Garner had another sexual touching incident report but our police source did not know what that charge was for.”
“Garner was also picked up for possession of narcotics with a ‘dangerous tag,’ an offense that means the drugs could be ‘oxy or meth.’ ”
“Garner also got busted for false impersonation, or giving a false name to the police [during his most recent arrest].”
“The rest of the incident reports concerned his involvement in local organized crime and the untaxed cigarette trade.”
“Garner was also picked up driving with a suspended license multiple times.”
“There are other sealed arrests that you can’t see,” our police source told us. “Police were well acquainted with Garner in the neighborhood.”
“The video supports the notion that police knew Garner well. ‘Every time you see me, you want to harass me, you want to stop me, say I’m selling cigarettes,’ ” he said before being apprehended by Staten Island police.
Anyone who thinks this is the end of police leaks showing who Garner really was is wrong. New York City cops are smarter than the Left and that will be the unraveling of Al Sharpton’s latest circus act.
The main point is, with Trayvon, Brown and Garner, they all triggered the escalation of their situations. However, with Garner they did NOT resort to lethal force, Garner's own health problems are what killed him.
Selling loose cigarettes and resisting arrest are not capital crimes. Unless the police choose to make them so.
So the cops did not chose to make this a capital offense, as your post insinuates. Garner made his own choices and paid for them with his life.
He was killed by the tax agents of NYC. If he was like Rev Al and owe $4mm in back taxes, he could have had a coffee and smoke with Hussein.
From the article above.
Should have looked for prior responses. Didn’t mean to pile on.
Whether or not you like NY cigarette taxes, the larger point is, it was his decision to resist arrest that triggered his own cardiac arrest. His own wife called him lazy, and if he could not make some black market coin selling smokes, it would have just been something else.
... Selling illegal cigarettes on the street. Now, just think about that for a moment. SIX kids.
He was probably doing it for pin money (I’m dating myself) welfare, food stamps, free housing, EIC, etc
bkmk
Affirmative action at it’s best.
Five cops to take down one man selling loose cigarettes. Nice to know that there is so little crime in Staten Island that they can devote so much manpower to violent crimes like that.
Just out of curiosity what is the penalty for selling loosies anyway?
And the cops did not kill him, his own health problems did.
If I pick a fight with someone, start wrestling with him, and he dies then I'm pretty sure I'm going to be charged with something. But then again I'm not a cop.
So the cops did not chose to make this a capital offense, as your post insinuates. Garner made his own choices and paid for them with his life.
The cops just sped him along.
“the arrest itself was supervised by a black officer, a female sergeant”
Wouldn’t be surprised if the grand jury closed the book right there; you see her in the video, and she has no problem with the police work...
All these protests just increase the number of people who would be Ok with any cop killing Garner-types just for the hell of it; very counter-productive. Segregation in the northeast is solidified by these incidents.
You are just looking for reasons to bash the cops instead of placing the blame where it belongs - on Garner, a miscreant with a long rap sheet who decided to resist arrest.
In the Brown case he certainly could have been charged with armed robbery for his actions in the convenience store; a felony. Is selling loosies a felony in New York?
You are just looking for reasons to bash the cops instead of placing the blame where it belongs - on Garner, a miscreant with a long rap sheet who decided to resist arrest.
And was killed for it. Did the punishment fit the crime?
I can't breathe!
They’re called non-issue activists and they’re really entertaining.
Logic is forbidden in this utopia for fools.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.