An emphatic Eric Garner talks to police, gesturing with his arms to make his point. Eventually, police move in as Garner raises both hands in the air and tells them not to touch him. One officer reaches for Garner's hand; seconds later, another officer wraps his arm around Garner's neck.
Cellphone video shot by a friend of Garner's shows the officer maintaining that hold as Garner is taken to the ground, crying out, "I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I can't breathe," over and over again.
The words stop. And Garner never gets up.
A grand jury has decided that there's no probable cause to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo, the man who put Garner in that chokehold on a Staten Island sidewalk, in the 43-year-old's death.
The New York City medical examiner's office also offered pertinent facts when it classified Garner's death as a homicide this summer. He died because of a "compression of neck (chokehold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police," the office found, while also calling Garner's "acute and chronic bronchial asthma, obesity and hypertensive cardiovascular disease" contributing factors.
In other words, there was a chokehold, and it played a part in Garner's death. Which raises the question: Should the chokehold have been used at all?
...
"Once (police) make an arrest, everything is designed for officer safety," Cevallos said. "And if a person doesn't immediately comply, then they can move right up the force continuum as needed. That's the way they're trained." [emphasis ours: sounds like the makings of a police state is the word "comply" is totally left up to the officer's discretion at the expense of civil liberties, particularly the freedom of speech]
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