Last year at the Metro/7th subway stop (for non-Angelenos, that's a hub that connects several rail lines, including the hellish passage into Compton), I saw two sheriff deputies--white or Latino, a male and a female--deputies conversing with a mentally ill black man, who was quit animate about some point. (It is safe to say that they were arguing about fare non-payment.) The fellow raised his hands high above his head, and that was the cue for the male cop to tackle him. The two went to the floor, and the female deputy joined in and arrested him. To my knowledge, no one died during that arrest. And though someone could've been killed, the deputy made the judgment call that he needed to end this confrontation. From my distance, it looked like police brutality.
The cops in the Eric Garner case were attempting to grab Garner by the wrists, but he waved them off. (Garner, who was 6-3 and over 350 pounds, had a history of resisting arrest.) It is a myth that Garner wasn't trying to resist arrest at the time of his death--though no loose cigarettes were found on him--he was clearly arguing with the cops on scene. He clearly didn't want to be arrested or touched. (I don't like being touched either, by the way. However, I can also recognize that the cops are allowed to touch me in a non-sexual manner in order to aid their investigation.) In Officer Pantaleo's brilliance, he thought to use a chokehold on the much larger adversary. It was a dick move, and it was against NYPD policy. In hindsight, the cops should've tried harder to negotiate a favorable outcome. There will be a million dollar settlement going to Garner's family. But none of that changes the fact that it wasn't a murder.
Let's get the terminology correct. "Homicide" means an unnatural death, not murder. Jeffrey Dahmer strangled over ten black men to death--he murdered black men, and he often used strangulation. Dahmer was not a cop trying to arrest anyone. He had the motive of needing to assert control and an incredibly bizarre fascination with death, leading to one of the most bizarre true-life American horror stories of the 20th century.
I am concerned with how sarcastic the "hands up" movement is. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BLACK MEN, DO NOT COME AT POLICE WITH YOUR HANDS RAISED!!! (There.) When the cops want you to come over, they will ask you to come over. You can yell and curse at cops all you want from the comfort and anonymity of the crowd. When the cops are talking to you, check your attitude. NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS. Any number of these shooting incidents have been caused by racism, yes, but also by black men oblivious to how they are perceived by others. YOU KNOW that you're a nice guy, but the cops don't know this.
There is an unfortunate anti-authoritarian attitude among so many American blacks that leads to self-destruction. American doctors so often just don't want to be subjected to the argument or accusation that they are attempting to enforce an Anglo-centric standard of beauty onto blacks. (I'm not making this up: Doctors refuse to tell black people to lose weight.) "Fat" is certainly a relative term, to be clear; there is a stigma among African American girls of being "boney." Mo'Nique has built an entire persona around criticizing "skinny bitches." Meanwhile, diabetes is striking down blacks and numerous blacks seem confused as to the cause. Libertarians tell us that blacks should be allowed to eat whatever they want--and the government shouldn't pay for poor blacks' healthcare. Thank God for Michelle Obama, in all seriousness. Can you imagine the accusations of racism if Laura Bush had told black women that they were too damn fat?
The use of video footage "proves" that it was a murder. We are overly reliant on video footage and not logic--if the cop wanted to kill Garner, he would've shot him. If you're planning to brutalize a suspect, you wouldn't do it while a camera is rolling. You would turn the camera off. (Advocates of officer-mounted cameras tend to ignore that the cops will be able to cover up the lens with a sticker. Or experience "battery failure" or "forget" to wear it--I can go on.) You wouldn't do it on a public street, in broad daylight. The image of this arrest is haunting, certainly. However, if he hadn't died, this never would've made the news. What makes the video haunting is that he did actually die after proclaiming that he was about to die.
Garner should've yelled: "I'm experiencing shortness of breathe." Rather he yelled: "I can't breath." Garner was not an educated man, and he used more common vernacular to describe his current health state. The cops, lacking much medical knowledge ("shortness of breath" being a red flag for a health crisis) and well-attuned in the art of BS, assumed he was faking it. They weren't really strangling him. They weren't really roughing him up--no healthy man should've been injured during the course of THAT arrest. Numerous rightwingers, bizarrely, are still using this as proof that he was faking it: If you cannot breath, how can you say that you cannot breath? Science!
This death brings to mind the late LAPD Chief Daryl Gates, who proclaimed in the early '90s that so many black men were being killed during chokeholds not that his people were using too much force but that "black people didn't respond to chokeholds like normal people." This statement has two potential meanings: Black men are so belligerent that they end up being accidentally killed or that black men are biologically unable to withstand a few seconds of strangulation. In either case, Gates was throwing out a nonsensical and fairly racist justification for his people's actions. You can be right and completely tone-deaf to the person whom you're explaining your logical conclusions to, and Gates's political idiocy led to the LA Riots. The use of chokeholds was abandoned for nightsticks...which led to the beating of a suspect named Rodney King, which led to the Riots. Thus both a controversial police tactic and the attempt to rectify a controversial police tactic led to the Riots.
According to the coroner: Contributing factors to Garner's death included bronchial asthma, heart disease, obesity, and hypertensive cardiovascular disease. Garner was not going to live a long life. He didn't follow doctor's orders--or he was never given doctor's orders. He also didn't listen to the cops, having been arrested multiple times--including for resisting arrest. His death was not entirely caused by his bad decisions, both legal and medical. He suffered an attack from overzealous law enforcement officers.
Still not murder.
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