Eric Garner, a 43-year-old father of six, is dead. This
is a tragedy, regardless of the circumstances. We rightly mourn
with his wife and children. They will never see their husband and
father again, and that should break everyone's heart.
When we
witness a gut-rending tragedy like this, we want to know who is
responsible. Who is to blame for depriving this family of its
husband and father?
As the facts emerge, it
becomes increasingly clear that, as tragic as this situation is,
in the end the culpability for Eric Garner's death rests with Eric
Garner.
To put it as simply as possible, if Mr. Garner had not
broken the law and then resisted arrest, he would be alive today.
While protesters are trying to make
this about race, it must be noted that the police showed up in
response to complaints from black business owners. The arrest was
ordered by a black officer, and the arrest itself was supervised
by a black officer, a female sergeant.
A crackdown on the sale
of illegal, untaxed cigarettes - called "loosies" since they are
sold in singles rather than in packs - had been ordered just days
before Garner's arrest by the highest ranking
black
police officer in the NYPD, Philip Banks.
So a black
officer ordered the crackdown, black business owners called for
the arrest, a black officer ordered the arrest, and a black
officer supervised the arrest itself. It's also worth noting that
the 23-member grand jury which refused to indict the arresting
officer included nine non-white members. Ask
yourself how many of those
facts you have heard from any member of the race-obsessed,
low-information media.Garner had been arrested 31
times, and eight of those had been for selling loosies. His rap
sheet goes back decades and includes arrests for assault and grand
larceny.
At the time of his death, Garner was out on bail after
being charged with multiple offenses, including illegal sale of
cigarettes, marijuana possession, false impersonation and driving
without a license.
So he certainly knew the law, knew he was in
violation, and knew doing it again would likely lead to his
arrest, a drill he'd been through dozens of times before.
There
were 228,000 misdemeanor arrests in New York City in 2013, the
last year for which figures are available. All of them put
together led to precisely zero deaths.
Garner, all six-foot,
three inches and 350 pounds of him, clearly resisted arrest,
swatting away the arresting officer's hands while loudly
exclaiming, "Don't touch me!" After he was taken to the ground, he
growled, "This ends here!" That could be taken any number of ways,
but in the heat of the moment it certainly could be read
reasonably as a declaration that he was going to fight arrest
until he was subdued by compelling force.
The patrolman who
wrestled Garner to the ground, Daniel Pantaleo, did it by the
book, using a takedown maneuver every policeman is taught at the
academy. He did not, in fact, use a chokehold, which is defined by
the NYPD as "any pressure to the throat or windpipe, which may
prevent or hinder breathing or reduce intake of air." Now Garner
was clearly able to breathe, since that's the only way he could
repeatedly say, "I can't breathe."
The autopsy explicitly
declares that there was no injury to Garner's windpipe or to his
neck bones. This was a wrestler's headlock, not a chokehold. (As a
sidenote, chokeholds, while contrary to police policy, are not in
fact illegal in the state of New York when an officer uses one to
restrain a resisting subject. They are not even illegal in New
York City, at the insistence of liberal mayor Bill DeBlasio.)
Patrolman Pantaleo was not indicted for the simple reason that he
did nothing wrong.
Garner's death likely should be attributed
to the fact that he himself
suffered from severe
asthma, something the arresting officers had no reason
to know.
According to Garner's
friends, his asthma was severe enough that he was
forced to quit his job as horticulturist for the city. He wheezed
when he talked and could not walk so much as a city block without
having to stop to rest. Garner "couldn't breathe" because of his
asthma, not because of a chokehold.
In addition, he
suffered from heart disease, advanced diabetes, hypertension,
obesity and sleep apnea. Contrary to public perception, he did not
die on site, nor did he die of asphyxiation. He suffered cardiac
arrest in the ambulance and was declared dead about an hour later
at the hospital.So it turns out that almost
everything bleated out by the race-mongers and the low-information
media has turned out to be wrong. As the wisest man who ever lived
wrote 3,000 years ago, "The one who states his case first seems
right until the other comes and examines him" (Proverbs
18:17).
Eric Garner and Michael Brown both fought the law, and
the law won. In the end, they have no one to blame but
themselves.
New York Post columnist
Bob McMcanus
concluded his column on
Eric Garner this way:
"There are many New Yorkers -
politicians, activists, trial lawyers, all the usual suspects -
who will now seek to profit from a tragedy that wouldn't have
happened had Eric Garner made a different decision.
"He was a
victim of himself. It's just that
simple."
