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NYC Cop Not Indicted in Chokehold Death

A New York grand jury has just decided against an indictment Wednesday in the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, who died after police officer Daniel Pantaleo put him in a chokehold in Staten Island in mid July. The arresting officer had accused Garner of selling loose, un-taxed cigarettes.

From CNN:

During his fatal police encounter, Garner raised both hands in the air and told the officers not to touch him.

Seconds later, a video shows an officer behind him grab him in a chokehold and pull him to the sidewalk, rolling him onto his stomach.

“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” Garner said repeatedly, his cries muffled into the pavement.

The cause of Garner’s death was “compression of neck (chokehold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police,” the medical examiner’s office has said. The death was ruled a homicide.

Click here to continue reading at CNN.

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42 Comments

  • Right Decision

    I think the grand jury made the right decision. The police were just doing their job and it was a tragic, freak occurrence that he died from it.

    • someone

      your wrong, see the video and you will see that there was no need to do what the policeman did.

      but this has nothing to do with race. the race card may not be played.

    • News?

      A chock hold is just that meant to chock the victim
      There is no excuse for this police violence.

    • Milhouse

      No, it is meant to subdue the suspect, and make him submit to arrest. All this guy had to do was stop resisting.

      Also, this was *not* a choke hold. There was no damage to the larynx, and he clearly could breathe, since he was able to speak. This was a career criminal, and he wanted the policeman to let go of him so he could turn around and either beat the policeman or escape.

    • At Milhouse

      If he were Jewish, you would be singing a different too. That is what racism is.

    • Milhouse

      That’s what Ahavas Yisroel is, and may I remind you that it’s not optional, it’s a Torah obligation and a כלל גדול בתורה, just like keeping Shabbos.

  • wrong decision

    Looters and rioting is bad for everyone and it’s repulsive that these idiot looters look for any excuse to commit crime against innocents.

    However, the police were negligent in the way they handled this. The PO should have sat him up after he was cuffed. His arm should not have been on his neck that long…

    If this were a Jewish guy would the posters here be so generous with the police? I suspect not.

  • This is sick brutality!

    Look at the video people! This is not cops doing their job, this is outright murder! He had no weapon and did not fight them or physically attack them. Ip

  • Gezhe

    Despicable decision. Trayvon Martin and Brown were criminal thugs who deserved to die. This guy was far from a thug. He tried to break a fight and the police jumped him and killed him for selling ‘loosies’. That’s the equivalent of a lemonade stand which “cheats” the government of tax and fails to file proper permits. Despicable.

    However, just goes to show you that the blacks don’t give a wit about justice. A thug gets killed and they all hang ribbons. A real decent black man gets killed and they don’t really care because sharpton and obama didn’t give the nod (yet?) to stir the pot…

    • Milhouse

      Untaxed cigarettes is not a lemonade stand. It’s big business. Where do you think he got them from? Someone had to have brought them in for him from somewhere. Big gangs do this (including Hamas).

      In any case, what were the police supposed to do about him? Just let him continue to sell his cigarettes on the street?! Of course they had to arrest him, and if he’d submitted to the arrest as he’d done dozens of times before he’d still be breathing now. But he decided “This ends here”, and that he was not going to be arrested, so what were they supposed to do then? Let him walk away?!

    • Gezhe

      You load a trunk full of cigarettes in a nearby state. Bring it back to NY, and kaboom! a big loosie business. Or you buy it from someone who did that for a small premium way below NY cig rates.

    • Amused Observer

      Comparing Garner to Hamas might be the dumbest thing I’ve read on this site.

  • To # 3 Wrong Decision wrote

    Since when is it the police “Job” to take down an unarmed SUSPECT at all cost including killing said suspect especially for the suspect allegedly selling loose cigarettes, and since when is a chokehold a “freak occurrence”. i.e. was walking home from work the other day and whatta you know, all of a sudden I was placed in a freak chokehold.

    From the daily news it seems that the cops are getting away with murder daily with their shoot to kill ask questions later attitude. We are all criminals in a cops eyes, we are their payday and they unfortunately are free to do with us as they please which includes lying, cheating, stealing, and murder.

    There is no reason for an experienced undercover cop to panic/lose his cool and feel the need to choke out a suspect without thinking that this will cut off the Mr. Garners air supply and may kill him. Therefore this chokehold has to have been deliberate (to kill) and the grand jury should have indicted.

    • Milhouse

      Garner was committing a crime right in front of the cops’ eyes. Nobody disputes that they were correct to arrest him. But when he started to resist, what do you expect them to have done? The cop did not apply a choke hold, but applied pressure on the artery to reduce blood supply to the brain, so the suspect would get weaker and stop resisting. There was no damage to the throat, as there would be with a choke hold. But since you’re such a genius, please suggest how they should have brought him down instead, considering how much bigger he was than them.

      By the way, choke holds are not illegal. They’re against NYPD policy, but that is not the law. Even if he used a choke hold, the worst that can happen is that he gets fired; he cannot be charged with a crime, any more than you can be charged with a crime for breaking your employer’s policies.

  • Menachem

    Last time I checked, their job clearly bans them from placing a suspect in a chokehold.

    • Milhouse

      Even if they broke their job’s rules (and they didn’t), the worst punishment for that is to be fired. Breaking your job’s rules is not a crime, and choke holds are not illegal.

  • Hypocritical

    The Crown Heights Jewish Community are so hypocritical, when the police do anything allegedly against a Jew, everyone cries “antisemitism” and everyone is up in arms about it (Such as the incident in Aliyah), but when they KILL a black person, people just say, “The police were just doing their job and it was a tragic, freak occurrence that he died from it”, where are the people’s sense of humanity?

  • NO

    This time I think the cop is guilty, he wasn’t being violent just trying to make a buck to support his family.

  • choke hold

    Definitely the cop was wrong. He may have need to use the choke hold to get him on the ground, but why did he continue to choke him. There was absolutely no reason for that. The cop should have been convicted.

    • Milhouse

      You’re outright lying. Not only was he never choked. not even for a second, but as soon as he was secured the hold was released. He was held (not in a choke hold) for less than 10 seconds. By the time he started to say that he couldn’t breathe, he was already cuffed, and not being held.

    • Milhouse

      There is no comparison to Gidone Busch. That was a straight out case of self defense. If the cops had not shot him he woudl have injured or killed one of them.

  • I am so glad people are coming to their senses!

    I was horrified by comment three and couldn’t believe people can find any justifiable reason how the police officer can be right in this case. Finally normal comments: this murder is so wrong! Poor guy and his family.

    • Milhouse

      Even the worst-case scenario does not add up to murder. Even if the cop had done everything wrong, he did not intend to kill anyone. But he didn’t do anything wrong. He arrested a resisting person who was about twice his weight, the only way he could. He used a legitimate hold, and as soon as it was no longer necessary he released it. There is nothing he could have done differently that would have had a different result.

  • DEAR MILHOUSE

    If you knew anything at all about what had transpired, you would know that the cops approached this man after he broke up a fight. They had him marked as a suspect for the cigarette trade, but at that instance he did nothing wrong and there was no evidence present. Furthermore, chokeholds are ILLEGAL. The cop used ILLEGAL measures to ‘subdue’ a perfectly docile gentleman. Watch the video – he had no weapons and was not being aggressive towards the cops. Perhaps he was being non-compliant but there was no call for violence, especially to that extent.

    • Milhouse

      You are lying on all counts. First, shoke holds are not illegal. The moment you claim that you are lying. And no, he was not being “perfectly docile”, he actively resisted being arrested. He told the cops he had had enough of being arrested and was not going to allow it again, and he slapped the cop’s hand away. What was the cop supposed to do at that point? Let him walk?! Let every criminal know that if you’re bigger than the policeman you can do whatever you want, and they can’t touch you?! He had to be subdued, and that was the only way they could do it. Not a choke hold — there was no damage to his throat — but a hold that would bring him down.

      The bottom line is that he died because the stress of fighting the cops triggered a heart attack. Now the cops should have realized that shortness of breath is a symptom of heart attack, and as soon as he was cuffed they should have rolled him on his back and called an ambulance. But that does not make them criminals.

  • Milhouse

    Here’s a comment I copied from another site, that I think sheds some light on the situation:
    ==== begin quoted comment ====
    Thirty four years of police work behind the following comments. First off I hate the idea of using cops as cigarette tax collectors. Unfortunately cops can’t refuse to enforce stupid laws. The cops in this video tried to use a typical arm grab to handcuff this 6 5″ 350 lb man. He pulled away from them like they were children. They have no option now but to increase the force until they overcome his resistance. They take him to the ground and hand cuff him. He,s saying I can,t breath but someone who can’t breath can’t talk. They don’t hit him. They don’t beat him. They simply overcome the massive resistance of this huge man. He of course amped his body up with massive adrenaline and his heart gives out in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Even the most anti-police of you must understand that the police cannot allow a man to defy the law just because he is bigger and stronger than a single or two or three officers. What would you have the police do when a person successfully resists arrest? Walk away? The fact that the man died is simply not that uncommon in the police service. In my precinct the same situation occurred in arresting a large muscular assault suspect who fought with four officers who were barely able to control him. His adrenaline pump shut down his heart also. He was not choked or beat but only wrestled into compliance. In this current casethe suspect was not choked and his throat was not injured. He was taken down by a seatbelt hold with his arm between his neck. This is a sad incident. If you wish to assign blame, blame the politicians who sent the cops out to be tax collectors and blame the suspect for believing he could physically resist a lawful arrest. The cops were just caught between these two mistakes doing their duty.
    ==== end quoted comment ====
    I would add that the commenter is mistaken about this being about collecting taxes. The law against selling loosies has nothing to do with, it’s a federal regulation made by 0bama’s FDA. In this case the cigarettes were also not taxed, so there were two crimes, but the law they were arresting him for breaking would be the same even if he’d bought the cigarettes legally and paid taxes on them.

  • To those justifying this

    This incident was classified as a homicide. Since when is it a policeman’s job to murder? In self-defense, there is leeway. But this man posed no threat to the cops and there was nothing to defend themselves against. Get with the program.

    • Milhouse

      How do you leap from “homicide” to “murder”? Do you deny that the arrest was legitimate? Or that he was resisting? If not, then how do you suggest the cops should have arrested him instead?

    • Milhouse

      What part of it is clear? What part of it makes you think the cop did anything wrong?