NYPD chokes black man Eric Garner to death for ALLEGEDLY selling cigarettes

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/staten-island-man-dies-puts-choke-hold-article-1.1871486

A 400-pound asthmatic Staten Island dad died Thursday after a cop put him in a chokehold and other officers appeared to slam his head against the sidewalk, video of the incident shows.

“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” Eric Garner, 43, repeatedly screamed after at least five NYPD officers took him down in front of a Tompkinsville beauty supply store when he balked at being handcuffed.

Within moments Garner, a married father of six children with two grandchildren, stopped struggling and appeared to be unconscious as police called paramedics to the scene. An angry crowd gathered, some recording with smartphones.

“When I kissed my husband this morning, I never thought it would be for the last time,” Garner’s wife, Esaw, told the Daily News.

She got no details from police until after she had gone to the hospital to identify his body, she said.

A 400-pound asthmatic Staten Island dad died Thursday after a cop put him in a chokehold and other officers appeared to slam his head against the sidewalk, video of the incident shows.

“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” Eric Garner, 43, repeatedly screamed after at least five NYPD officers took him down in front of a Tompkinsville beauty supply store when he balked at being handcuffed.

Within moments Garner, a married father of six children with two grandchildren, stopped struggling and appeared to be unconscious as police called paramedics to the scene. An angry crowd gathered, some recording with smartphones.

“When I kissed my husband this morning, I never thought it would be for the last time,” Garner’s wife, Esaw, told the Daily News.

She got no details from police until after she had gone to the hospital to identify his body, she said.
“I saw him with his eyes wide open and I said, ‘Babe, don’t leave me, I need you.’ But he was already gone,” she said.

A family friend searching for her in the hospital ran into detectives from the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Division. The friend put them on the phone with her, the grieving widow said.

She spoke with a Detective Howard, who told her, “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. He said his office was involved “because there is wrongdoing,” she said.

Police officials said Garner had a history of arrests for selling untaxed cigarettes. Cops said they observed him selling his wares Thursday on Bay St. and moved in for an arrest.


An NYPD spokesman would only say the man “was being placed in custody, went into cardiac arrest and died” at Richmond University Medical Center.

But Esaw Garner and other family members said it was a trumped up claim.

“They’re covering their asses, he was breaking up a fight. They harassed and harassed my husband until they killed him,” she said. Garner’s family said he didn’t have any cigarettes on him or in his car at the time of his death.

She said she pleaded with police at the hospital to tell her what happened, but they brushed her off.

“They wouldn’t tell me anything,” she said.

5 cops,1 choking that man and another smashing his head on the concrete, while he pleads with them he can't breathe. Shit like this is why I laugh when I hear about a pig ass cop getting murdered.

As I said last week on WWBM,nobody will do anything about it besides changing the profile pic on their FB/IG pages. No rioting,no protests,no demonstrations or steps to change legislation on how these sorry motherfucking pussy ass cops do their shitty jobs.

 

Those cops have fans on this site.

 

This x's 1000.

 

This is why I do not trust cops and never will.

 

I'm gonna play devil's advocate. Is it possible they didn't hear him say he couldn't breathe? Also it does look like he is resisting in the video. I've never seen a situation where they wanted to arrest you and didn't because you didn't want to be. So why resist?
I didn't want to see dude die but it does look like an accident.

 

To me, the dude hung around Eric's neck should have let up once the others assisted in getting him to the ground. The officer didn't let up though, he continues choking. At that point, it's no longer an accident imo.

I hate that people distrust police but I can understand their feelings because of shit like this. I have many policemen in my family who wouldn't let this shit slide on their watch but maybe they're the minority within their field. Pretty sad.

 

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I always just instantly cease any sort of struggle because it seems like death is always a likely or at least possible outcome in any interaction with law enforcement. Even when you're in the right, it could happen. I'm sick of death always being among the palette of choices for officers with zero likelihood of consequences for them.

 

ERIC GARNER AND THE PLAGUE OF POLICE BRUTALITY AGAINST BLACK MEN

http://www.vice.com/read/eric-garne...utality-against-black-men?utm_source=vicefbus

If you haven’t heard about Eric Garner yet, let me fill you in. He was a 43-year-old father of six who lived in Staten Island, and he died in the street on Thursday after as many as four New York police officers choked him and slammed his head on the ground. The NYPD told the Associated Press that they stopped Garner because he was selling untaxed cigarettes, something he’d been arrested for before. However, witnesses who spoke with local news website Staten Island Live have basically said that’s bullshit. Ramsey Orta, who was on the scene and shot a now infamous video that is making the rounds, can be heard in the clip saying that all Garner had done to get bothered by the police was break up a fight.

In the video, Garner denies any wrongdoing and asks why he’s being hassled. “Every time you see me you want to mess with me," he says in an exasperated tone that most men of color across this country can relate to. Garner, who was 400 pounds and has been described by people who knew him as a “gentle giant,” suffered from chronic asthma and police claim his death was the result of a heart attack suffered during the arrest.

Police say that Garner made a “fighting stance” and resisted arrest. Which, based on the video clip, is complete nonsense, considering we can see him pleading to the officers, "I can't breathe, I can't breathe!" before going completely silent as several officers pile on him.

The video of Garner’s death is disgusting, but I can’t say I was shocked or even outraged the first time I watched it. At this point, as someone who’s read and written about some of these stories time and time again—and who's had firsthand experiences with the way cops treat black males—this kind of reprehensible shit is not surprising at all. After so many cases like Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell, you start to feel desensitized by the seemingly insurmountable injustice that plagues communities of color.

As an editor at VICE, I am well aware of how often the “Black Person Is Abused by Police” story arises in the news cycle. It’s become sort of an evergreen editorial topic for us, like anal sex or circumcision activism. If one of my contributors submits a piece on the phenomenon of unarmed black dudes getting shot by the cops a little past deadline, I just tell them to wait a few weeks and we’ll be able to run it again when the next black kid gets killed with a few of the details changed. We’ve even resorted to running Bad Cop Blotter, a column dedicated to the brutality of American police just to chronicle it all—because the instances are so numerous that we can’t commission full articles every time it happens across the country.

In the time since I wrote about the curious case of Victor White in Louisiana (local police claim that White shot himself while handcuffed in the back of a cop car), my inbox has been getting blown up by grieving black parents and community members from all over the country who are suspicious about the events that transpired in altercations between the police and their loved ones. These stories are everywhere—sometimes they’re never reported or they end in trumped-up charges.

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This long legacy of police brutality really hit home for me a couple weeks ago, when I was sitting in a lush theater seat at the industrial-chic BAMcinématek to see the 25th anniversary screening of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. If you haven’t seen the classic film, it takes place in the late 80s on the hottest day of the year in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood as tensions mount between the blacks, Italians, and the NYPD. The movie hit theaters a few years before the 1992 riots in Los Angeles and can been seen as a perfect encapsulation of that era’s contentious race relations. The climax of the film, which ends in a race riot, is punctuated by the iconic young black character Radio Raheem (played masterfully by Bill Nunn) dying in the choke hold of NYPD officers. Most famously, as Raheem gasps in vain, the camera frames just his twitching feet, making a horrific visual allusion to the history of black lynching in the United States. To me, this shot has always signified a truth often ignored through all of our claims of equality and progress—that the plight of the black man in America hasn’t changed as much as we’d like to think. It’s so incredibly disheartening to think that a film made about the racial turmoil of the early 90s is just as relevant today as it was a quarter of a century ago.

Like the fictional death of Radio Raheem, the actual death of Eric Garner is a blatant reminder that in the eyes of the law, black lives are worth a lot less in this country than whites and that black men are still seen as needing to be controlled and killed if necessary—just as they were in antebellum South. If you’re a black man, that harsh reality is the kind of shit that haunts you so much that it almost seems easier to acquiesce and just give up. Why expend emotion over something that seems like it will never ever change? That’s the question I jadedly asked myself as I watched Eric Garner’s video. It wasn’t until I hit social media that I was pulled out of the hopeless, resolute reality of these incidents. There, on Facebook feeds and Twitter hashtags, I was emboldened by the righteous indignation of my peers of all colors, clamoring at the clear fucked-up-ness surrounding the NYPD and Garner's death.

For what it’s worth, we’ve got to keep talking about the Eric Garners and the Ramarley Grahams and the Kenneth Chamberlains of the world in the hope—even if it is a blind hope—that this shit doesn’t happen again.

 

STFU.

That's disgusting to say and not true.

 

Have you met Paniro? He went hard for George Zimmerman

 

Unlike the Zimmerman case, this case has video of the incident. I don't think anyone can argue for the police in this case.

And it's STILL a disgusting thing to say.

 

Siding with a child killer is just as disgusting. Video or not. You conveniently don't pay attention to dude but whatevs carry on

 

horrible, and shameful. Everyone involved needs to be in jail.

And I really hope no stupid athletes/black celebs start making "Kobe-like" statements.. Just shut up..

 

I'm sort of conflicted on this.

I heard that putting suspect's in a choke hold is ILLEGAL for NYPD, so from jump they shouldn't been using that technique.

However I think I'd rather be put in a choke hold than have a nervous cop pull his service 9mm on me in an altercation.

That said I've never been put in a choke hold but from what I've read and seen, usually the worst outcome is the victim passes out. People don't usually suffocate to death from a choke hold.

Also, I heard the victim died from a heart attack, not suffocation.

I've had (treatable) asthma my entire life and you just don't die like that from it. You go through a period where it gradually gets harder and harder to breathe, but you don't have 'sudden death' in minutes from most asthma.

If dude had a heart attack from the cops using excessive force, the choke hold IMO was a contributing factor but the suspect weighing 400# was probably a bigger issue.

Still, bottom line is this man didn't have to die and there doesn't seem to be any reason these cops needed to put him a choke hold.

I just don't like the reporting on this case. The news reports make it sound like the victim died directly from the choke hold, when what probably happened is the psychological trauma and stress from being put in a choke hold and having his head slammed to the ground made this guy's heart give out.

 

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This here.

 

i agree.
the art of war says know your enemy.
we know cops love bouncing a n+++ head on the pavement. so keep your cool.

the cops are wrong all the way around. they couldve gave him a citation and kept it moving.

hell it was cigs.......

they acted unprofessional

 

Cops take down nonviolent guys that big all the time without administering a choke hold. Confiscate the cigs, ask the suspect to turn around and if he doesn't, trip him to the ground, get him on his biggol' stomach and cuff him.

The guy wasn't really resisting arrest.

Cops IMO are the ones most responsible for escalating a situation into a violent confrontation because despite what any of us thinks, they rarely ever act like they're in control of what's going on.

That many cops on scene and that's the best they could handle the situation??smdh:smt009

I don't care how many guns or tevlar vests you give 5+ POs, they're still scared to death of ONE big Black man.

Every one of those NYPD officers should be bumped down to writing jaywalking citations and meter patrol.

Paniro, you really need to stop with blaming the victim when law enforcement fucks up and abuses their authority.

We already know and expect that people are going to commit crimes, petty offenses and felonies.

That doesn't excuse excessive force and legalized murder.