Eric Garner
We have heard a lot about criminals who have gotten shot by the police, but we haven’t heard of a case where police officer killed innocent man to death, except in the case of Eric Garner. Eric Garner’s case sparked about institutional racism in America’s criminal justice system because he was killed for minor crime and the grand jury didn’t indict the officer.
First of all, Eric garner was unarmed when he was caught by the police. The police used physical force even though Garner had nothing to defend himself with and he didn’t try to escape. According to reporter Judith Browne Dianis (Msnbc.com), “On the day of his death, bystanders say Garner was breaking up a fight when he caught the eye of the police.” This shows that the officers noticed Garner because of the fight. Garner get into
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the mess because he was being the good guy to break up the fight. When the police pulled over their car was unmarked and the police officer who came out were plain clothes and knew garner well. (Al Baker paragraph 1-2) The officer argued with Garner before the chokehold. According Judith Browne Dianis “Police responded to Garner as a threat.” (B. Dianis) how could they respond to him as a threat when he didn’t try to fight and was unarmed? A person has the right to speak and that doesn’t mean the person is a threat. Second of all, Eric Garner’s death was unnecessary because his life was taken away for minor crime. According James Queally, a journalist for the Los Angeles Times, “Eric was believed to be selling untaxed cigarettes, a charge on which he had been arrested several times previously.” (j. Queally 1). At the time of the incident, a video was recorded that showed two police officers standing beside Eric Garner. Eric Garner was unarmed while saying “what do you want from me, I haven’t done anything wrong.” The video also showed a few minutes later, one of the officers grabbed the neck of Garner and put him down on the ground with chokehold. (New York daily news YouTube video). According to James Queally “The chokehold caused him to suffer neck and chest compressions.” (j.Queally). after a while, many officers came to the scene and some of them were telling the people who were recording to stay away.(daily news YouTube video). Finally, even with all the evidence from the video, the grand jury decided to ‘not’ indict officer Pantello. It was obvious that the police killed Garner. Despite all the evidence, the members grand jury responded by saying, “There was not probable cause that a crime was committed by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo.” (Andrew Siff, Jonathan Dienst and Jennifer Millman page 1). The response of the grand jury seemed like they didn’t care that a man's life was taken away. This showed the unfairness of the grand jury to demonstrate lack of ignoring the rights of citizens. What more evidence could they want other than a live scene that can be watched? This was the first case in all the paste police harassment that had a video record. The grand jury could have at least ruled something for the officer who was responsible for Eric Garner’s death. The grand jury is there to rule with justice in any given case that they receive. How could the grand jury ignore the facts while their job is to judge cases with justice and protect the rights of the citizens. There is a need for a change in our criminal justice system and grand juries rights.
It seems like the grand juries are siding with police when it comes to court cases. According to a study by the Houston Chronicle, “Grand juries in Harris County, Texas, haven't indicted a police officer in a decade, and grand juries in Dallas looked at 81 possible cases of police criminality between 2008 and 2012 and indicted only one police officer.” (Patrik Jonsson page 1-2). It seems more citizens’ particularly African Americans, are dying because of police shootings or physical violence. More police to be getting away with felonies. The lives of many like Eric Garner are taken away without something in return. In addition, experts say “In places like Staten Island, the pool of grand jurors, polls show, have more respect for police officers than in other boroughs, and may themselves be prejudicial. And leeway for police officers comes out of a deeply held social compact.” (Patrik Jonsson page 2). Different places have high respect for the police this may be why it was hard for the grand jury to indict officer
Pantello. We need to speak up and take action as a nation to prevent injustice in our criminal justice. We need to work on making the police and citizens work together. There are other cases that were similar to this and it seems like we have to continue to fight as a national to prevent another person from dying in the hands of the police.
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In 2014, the death of Eric Garner in New York City raised controversial conversations and highlighted the issues of race, crime, and policing in neighborhoods that tend to be poor and racially isolated. Garner, an unarmed black man, was killed after being tackled and held in a “chokehold.” According to the AP Polls in December 2014, “Police killings of unarmed blacks were the most important news stories of 2014.” The problem is that young black men are targeted by police officers in which they have responded with the misuse of force and policy brutality. It is evident that this issue affects many people nationwide. The civilians do not trust the police department and the justice system because they hold the perceptions that police officers are immune from prosecution despite their actions. In particular, black individuals, specifically black males, do not feel safe in the presence of police officers because they are not held accountable for their mistakes.
Massachusetts, U.S.A. who was an American crime boss as the head of the Boston-area Winter
The story unfolded that, Garner was unarmed and therefore harmless when he was being arrested for supposedly selling loose cigarettes. It may not be out of context to put someone in uncomfortable situation to enable arrest, but for the fact that Garner cried out for his life by saying “I can’t breathe”, should have warranted some form of release which required the immediate discretion of the law enforcement to save the life of Garner, but they ignored him. This led to his death. In my opinion, for America to have an effective equal rights system as we profess that governs our nation, the law must be reinforced to discourage negligence and noncompliance to racial issues and partiality, which often leads to biasness in a
During the post-WWII period, blacks fight for desegregation resulted in violence, murder, economic warfare and obstruction by local and state governments. The repression, violence and murders were a significant setback among Negroes in the postwar years. For example, the death of Emmett Till was not just another statistic in the tragic history of American lynchings (Feldstein, page 290). However, it was a defensive act on the half of white southerners to the decision in the Brown v. Board of Education. The murder of the fourteen-year-old African American Emmett Till was a gruesome act. Rob Bryant, twenty-four years old, and his half-brother J.W. Milam, thirty-six, kidnapped Emmett Till, a Chicago native, at gunpoint from his relatives’ cabin
After the brutal lynching of Emmett Till, a fourteen year old African American boy, America watched as a broken, beaten body cried and said “No more!” to the faces of racism and discrimination and to his transgressors, who were unjustly freed. Visiting Mississippi from Chicago, young Emmett Till was upbeat, humorous, and a little daring but unfamiliar with the grimy workings of the South (Callard). Thus, he didn’t realize the consequences of being himself around white people: he did not know why he shouldn’t whistle at that white women. He did not know that only a few hours later he would lie beaten and dead, with his eyes gouged out, tied to a cotton-gin fan, floating through the Tallahatchie River (History.com Staff; Baldwin). He did not
Officers are trained and taught different polices that require them not to be biased towards any gender or race. Such officers include Sunil Dutta, if you don’t want to get shot, tasted pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you.” (Dutta) uses policies to their advantage. Lack of African-American officers, mainly in communities with citizens of color, can lead to an inquiry that there is a bias in law enforcement agencies and their policies. With recent events in the news displaying the misconduct of officers in an African-American communities like, in July of 2014, where the death of Eric Garner because of “chokehold” by a police officer hit home for many African-Americans and made them question the legislative decisions on policies causing a distrust and lack of confidence within the police departments, shying away citizens from