The Killing of Eric Garner - Was It Necessary?
The first thing to note about the police killing of Eric Garner in New York is that – despite what you may have heard – this is not a partisan issue.
Fox News commentator Judge Napolitano says that the Grand Jury should have indicted the NYPD police officer who applied the lethal chokehold for excessive force.
George W. Bush said that the grand jury decision was “hard to understand.”
And the Christian Science Monitor notes:
Many on the political right and left united to condemn the grand jury decision, a rare event in an age of acute polarization.
The cover of the conservative New York Post says: “IT WAS NOT A CRIME,” written in big, bold letters, accompanied by still frames of Pantaleo putting Garner in a chokehold.
Fox News syndicated columnist and contributor Charles Krauthammer called the grand jury’s decision “totally incomprehensible.”
“I think anybody who looks at the video would think this was the wrong judgment,” Krauthammer said.
“It defies reason. It makes no sense,” wrote Sean Davis at the Federalist. “Just going on the plain language of the law, the police officer who killed Garner certainly appears to be guilty of second-degree manslaughter at the very least … All we have to do is watch the video and believe our own eyes.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/12/police-killing.html
Eric Garner’s killing and why the police chokehold is so racially charged
Of all the tragic elements in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, perhaps the most notable is how little it offers that is new or unique. Despite bans and decades of controversy, the chokehold is still apparently in use. It’s still lethal. And it’s still as racially charged as ever.
Dozens of chokehold deaths have come across the country — from Las Vegas to Los Angeles to New York — and while most occurred decades ago, the debate over the manuever remains fractious. One camp says versions of the chokehold can be applied safely. The other condemns the practice as one of the riskiest tools in a cop’s arsenal. The conversation began when the practice was routine — and mired in allegations of racial injustice and discrimination.
In 1982, the Criminal Law Bulletin published an investigation that found the Los Angeles Police Department had used chokeholds at least 975 times in 18 months. Between 1975 and 1982, cops killed 15 people with it — 12 of whom were African American. “What’s all the fuss about?” one resident of upscale Laguna Hills wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 1978. “There’s one simple and effective way to avoid death-by-chokehold: Just don’t try to escape from the police.”
But it wasn’t so simple for 20-year-old James Thomas Mincey, an African American whose death in 1982 was a significant chapter in the story of chokeholds.
His mother said he was “brutally beaten” by police in an “unprovoked attack.” According to the Los Angeles Times, police said they stopped Mincey for driving with a cracked windshield. Police said he resisted when they tried to switch his handcuffs from front to back. Witnesses said his mother, who was present, begged the police to stop the beating, but without success.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/12/04/why-the-police-chokehold-is-so-racially-charged/
