Eric Garner was a 400 pound, 6’4 black man, who died after a member of the?NYPD put him in a choke-hold on Thursday in Staten Island, NY.
According to witnesses, Mr. Garner was trying to break up a fight. In uncensored video uploaded to Youtube, we can hear Garner speaking of his ill feelings towards the police for always bothering people like him. Soon thereafter, a cop takes Mr. Garner down by putting him in a choke-hold, a method which has been banned. Eric Garner had asthma and repeatedly can be heard telling the cops that he cannot breathe. Garner later died.
The Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio says he will investigate the circumstances surrounding Eric Garner’s death. I applaud the mayor for simply not brushing this under the rug, but one has to wonder if the groundswell of online support for the Garner family and those screaming “#JusticeForEricGarner” helped to persuade the mayor to pursue an investigation. Whatever the intentions are, I am happy that an investigation will be done and hope that true justice will be served.
Watching the video, one has to wonder whether the tactics used on this man were reasonable. I struggle to find where he was threatening the lives of the officers, but it seems as if that is not even the standard any more. At times, any backtalk, or resisting of arrest can lead officers to do anything they want, even if that method (choke-holds) have been banned by the force altogether. Again, most cops are good guys and help to keep us safe, but the ways in which black men (and women) are being treated keeps showing us the brutal reality of LWB: Living While Black. Sure, there have been white people who have been attacked and killed at the hands of the cops. I have written about the homeless man who was savagely beaten by cops, for example. We have to acknowledge however, the unusually high amount of black people being taken away from us over very peculiar circumstances. Everyone today can be a journalist; the cameras were turned on and the choke-hold of the asthmatic Eric Garner was captured for the world to see. This can be fortunate for us justice-seekers, but for his family, it will never bring him back. There are countless victims and families who have never received justice and never will; those who lived in the times before phone cameras could so readily capture everything, and those that even when moments of injustice were captured, it didn’t matter. We owe it to these people to help make sure that every act perpetrated onto Mr. Garner is investigated and I hope his family will receive some form of peace.
Watch video of this stunning altercation here and let us know what you think on the Liberal America Facebook page.
