Excerpt
Medical examiners concluded that Garner was killed by “compression of neck (chokehold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.”,[
Not all choke holds are illegal.
Read your own excerpt and use your own eyes.
Compression of neck AND compression of chest AND prone positioning.
There is a difference between a choke hold and an illegal choke hold. An illegal choke hold cuts off supply of blood to the brain and the person passes out, sometime never to recover. He does not say "I can't breathe, I can't breathe", because the primary effort is to apply pressure to the arteries and shut off the blood, not the air. That is why that technique is so dangerous and why it is illegal.
Eric Garner's air was cut off by the fact that he was positioned on his stomach with somebody sitting on his back, with his arms cuffed behind him. Do an experiment yourself, right now. Lay down on the floor with your hands behind your back, and see how well you can breathe. The fact that Garner was unusually large and had asthma exacerbated this problem. But restraining him in this way was also not illegal. This was proper procedure that resulted in a tragic accident because the person was unusually vulnerable to this kind of stress.
So the crux of the matter is that Garner was not killed by an illegal choke hold. He was killed by the application of a legal choke hold, in combination with other legal restraints that lead to his accidental death.
To say that Garner was killed by an illegal chokehold is a damn lie, and a damn lies tend to have negative consequences.
bttt