^I would have defined “hysterics” as opposed to “race mongers”, but as a former law enforcment officer trained in the techniques used on Garner, and an EMT for four decades, I would agree with the above description of events as shown in the videos, including the less often seen videos of them administering care to Garner. I would say that as the officers had to lie on him to secure him, that could have caused additional respiratory distress, but again, only a complication of his physcial condtion and problems, not the cause per se.
As with the lies long known regarding the actions of CiA personnel or contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Bush administration lies to build the case for war against Saddam, facts and evidence don’t sway those convinced by hysteria (9/11 OR “race”) to believe what the propaganda, not facts, say.
I would guess that most people in America DO “profile”, conciously or subconciously, almost everyone they meet, from race, to clothing, make of car they drive, whether men have facial hair and pony tails as opposed to clean-shaven and short haired, visible tattoos, and height to weight ratio. Profiling alone does NOT automatically become discrimination! When a police officer confronts an individual twice his size, with known prior arrests, race becomes secondary in his evaluation, personal safety warrants concern on the first two elements alone.
I think the whole idea of using race as an issue in the attempted arrest of Mr. Garner is beside the point. The point is that he was choked to death. Last I heard, selling “loosies” is not a capital crime.
The video I saw showed the arresting officer with his arm clearly around Mr. Garner’s neck, with his arm muscles bulging and his skin bright red. This officer was choking the perp, whether he intended to or not.
The fact that you can’t say that you can’t breathe if you can’t breathe is stupid semantics. Would you have rather he said something closer to the truth, like: “I most certainly can breathe, but the amount of oxygen that I can intake is not enough to maintain consciousness”? He was saying that his breathing had been impaired significantly. Debating which words he should have used is deliberately bypassing the point.
I know dtroutma has law enforcement experience, and I bow to your superior knowledge. But I have to wonder, and I will ask anyone with more experience:
Would it have been so hard to say to Mr. Garner: “Look. I have a gun. I have mace. I have a taser and a nightstick. And I have a half dozen colleagues right here who are equally well-armed. Now we can go quietly and calmly, or we can do it the hard way.”?
I submit that the outcome would have been far different if those words (or something similar) had been used. Please tell me if I am wrong, and why, as I genuinely would like to learn from this.
Because of that, I do not know that he knew he would be arrested, but from what I have read, he should have expected it.
I am an optometrist; no harm done. Just a different type of doc.
And you are absolutely correct: other methods may have killed him as well. Just recently a local police officer was killed when her partner zapped her with a taser to tease her. Sometimes bad things happen when you don’t expect them.
Do I think any furor would have been raised if other methods of subduing him would have killed him? To a degree, yes. There will always be people who will find a reason to jump on other people, regardless of justification.
My point, though, was that most everyone will not like others to touch them. Although this may meet the letter of the law concerning resisting arrest, it is not active resistance, and does not warrant a tackle and chokehold. But I freely admit to not being trained, and I may be very off base; that’s why I was asking others who have more experience for help in my understanding.
I truly do believe, though, that if he had been told what I wrote previously, he should have had the capability to realize that resisting would be unproductive, and he may well have been more willing to go quietly. Again, what do I know?
Although I will agree that he contributed to his death, I cannot agree that the officer was not more culpable.
And it’s not just this one incident. I witnessed a video shot by a child in the back seat of a car in Connecticut. The driver was pulled over for not wearing a seat belt. Three officers demanded that all passengers get out of the car. I have been fortunate, in that the most I have had to deal with law enforcement have been speeding (twice in 40+ years). In each case, though, I was sternly instructed to stay IN the car.
The passengers were perplexed and stated that they were afraid to leave the vehicle. Suddenly, the front seat passenger (a male) who WAS wearing a seat belt, had his window smashed, was pulled from the car, was tasered and put into handcuffs within about 10 seconds.
Incidents such as these will create prejudice against police, regardless of race. When cops use excessive force, and people see this, they lose trust, which is so very important in civilized society. If the officers are punished/disciplined, we feel that the playing field is level. If we believe that they can get away with killing people, it’s got to make it difficult for good police officers.
And that’s my overarching point.
Thanks for your insightful questions, and I hope I haven’t been too wordy in my response.
Play one: in on incident of note, my partner and I (with guns etc) had arrested two of three guys for selling narcotics. As I was cuffing two, the third (much larger guy) hit my partner and took off. My partner chased him into the woods, I cuffed my guys to my car’s door handled and followed them. When I caught up, the big guy was beating my partner on the head with my partner’s flashlight. I took him down, and had dropped my radio. As I tried to reach and call for backup, he kept rising with my Kel light across his throat. The third or forth time I informed him of where I’d insert the light to choke him to death, and he stopped resisitng. We took my partner to the hospital and the bad guy, about 6’ 4" and 280 pounds, to jail. In booking him, he calmly asked, “If I’d gotten up again, you have killed me, right?” I equally calmly informed him, “Yes”.
NOTE: two of the three initiallky responded with good sense, complied, and served rather brief time for selling drugs. The third larger, and dumber guy, resisted, attacked a police officer, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, as some of my partners injuries could potentially have proven fatal, as in the case of Mr. Garner’s pre-existing physical problems, NOT caused by the contact with police. (aggravated, perhaps, but his death was NOT “caused” by police and he did NOT stop breathing, merely had difficulty, and he did NOT get choked, nor did he, as still being reported, die on the street.)
Justjoking: I too would like to see the PRE-contact conversation with the man. I had a guy tell me I didn’t have any “friends” available. He was 6.11 inches and I just stopped him for speeding and he, and his buddy and their girlfriends on the bikes, were being idiots. I pointed to my pocket, with the butt of a chief special, and informed him I had five “friends” who’d blow a hole in him big enough to drive his Honda 750 through. HE, then became, my “friend”, and told his buddy to just shut up and get his dirver’s license out. Yes, he was a black gentleman from Hayward, but I didn’t know that with helmet, jacket, etc., when I pulled him over. I was still polite, even in language and tone when pointing out the dhief special, which; even when the perpetrator becomes an idiot, the officers should NOT!
If the perp goes beyond that? Well, I think Missouri and New York cases both showed what happens. (I still have serious questions on MO. though. On BOTH sides.)
Since when does selling a few loose cigarettes rise to such a level that you need 5 cops to arrest an individual? And how can they say he was resisting arrest? He wasn’t being aggressive. He wasn’t fighting with the arresting officer. He was bull rushed for no good reason whatsoever. And the cops ignored his pleas of “I can’t breathe”. Perhaps the officer didn’t use a choke hold but they did restrict his windpipe in some manner. It was a reprehensible act that could have been totally avoided by one cop issuing a ticket and having Mr. Garner move on. The alleged offense, after all, was a misdemeanor. There was no excuse for Mr. Garner’s death at all.
4my: knock it off. While Bryan Fischer (translation: no need to read another word) is probably happy to have you reprint his entire editorial, it stretches the “fair use” idea beyond breaking. Especially when you post it to multiple ’toons.
No doubt: no one race or ethnicity has a monopoly on being scum; there’s plenty to go around, unfortunately. And as these incidents show, the same videos can still be viewed through different filters to come to different conclusions; if I am correct, this means that even if we do outfit police officers with personal cameras, the interpretation of what is being recorded may not be as cut and dried as we would like it to be.
Just saw the kid with the toy pistol was 12 years old, yes, but 5’7" and 195 ! pounds! The cops did immediately say they thought he was 18-20 years old. Which, btw, another inherent profiling thing people, not just cops, do, is that an 18 year old is perceived as much more of a THREAT, than a 12 year old.
Thrangor over 9 years ago
Thank you. That was informative.
Dtroutma over 9 years ago
^I would have defined “hysterics” as opposed to “race mongers”, but as a former law enforcment officer trained in the techniques used on Garner, and an EMT for four decades, I would agree with the above description of events as shown in the videos, including the less often seen videos of them administering care to Garner. I would say that as the officers had to lie on him to secure him, that could have caused additional respiratory distress, but again, only a complication of his physcial condtion and problems, not the cause per se.
As with the lies long known regarding the actions of CiA personnel or contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Bush administration lies to build the case for war against Saddam, facts and evidence don’t sway those convinced by hysteria (9/11 OR “race”) to believe what the propaganda, not facts, say.
I would guess that most people in America DO “profile”, conciously or subconciously, almost everyone they meet, from race, to clothing, make of car they drive, whether men have facial hair and pony tails as opposed to clean-shaven and short haired, visible tattoos, and height to weight ratio. Profiling alone does NOT automatically become discrimination! When a police officer confronts an individual twice his size, with known prior arrests, race becomes secondary in his evaluation, personal safety warrants concern on the first two elements alone.
“profile” and “prejudice” are NOT the same thing.
I Play One On TV over 9 years ago
I think the whole idea of using race as an issue in the attempted arrest of Mr. Garner is beside the point. The point is that he was choked to death. Last I heard, selling “loosies” is not a capital crime.
The video I saw showed the arresting officer with his arm clearly around Mr. Garner’s neck, with his arm muscles bulging and his skin bright red. This officer was choking the perp, whether he intended to or not.
The fact that you can’t say that you can’t breathe if you can’t breathe is stupid semantics. Would you have rather he said something closer to the truth, like: “I most certainly can breathe, but the amount of oxygen that I can intake is not enough to maintain consciousness”? He was saying that his breathing had been impaired significantly. Debating which words he should have used is deliberately bypassing the point.
I know dtroutma has law enforcement experience, and I bow to your superior knowledge. But I have to wonder, and I will ask anyone with more experience:
Would it have been so hard to say to Mr. Garner: “Look. I have a gun. I have mace. I have a taser and a nightstick. And I have a half dozen colleagues right here who are equally well-armed. Now we can go quietly and calmly, or we can do it the hard way.”?
I submit that the outcome would have been far different if those words (or something similar) had been used. Please tell me if I am wrong, and why, as I genuinely would like to learn from this.
I Play One On TV over 9 years ago
I am not familiar with the total conversation.
Because of that, I do not know that he knew he would be arrested, but from what I have read, he should have expected it.
I am an optometrist; no harm done. Just a different type of doc.
And you are absolutely correct: other methods may have killed him as well. Just recently a local police officer was killed when her partner zapped her with a taser to tease her. Sometimes bad things happen when you don’t expect them.
Do I think any furor would have been raised if other methods of subduing him would have killed him? To a degree, yes. There will always be people who will find a reason to jump on other people, regardless of justification.
My point, though, was that most everyone will not like others to touch them. Although this may meet the letter of the law concerning resisting arrest, it is not active resistance, and does not warrant a tackle and chokehold. But I freely admit to not being trained, and I may be very off base; that’s why I was asking others who have more experience for help in my understanding.
I truly do believe, though, that if he had been told what I wrote previously, he should have had the capability to realize that resisting would be unproductive, and he may well have been more willing to go quietly. Again, what do I know?
Although I will agree that he contributed to his death, I cannot agree that the officer was not more culpable.
And it’s not just this one incident. I witnessed a video shot by a child in the back seat of a car in Connecticut. The driver was pulled over for not wearing a seat belt. Three officers demanded that all passengers get out of the car. I have been fortunate, in that the most I have had to deal with law enforcement have been speeding (twice in 40+ years). In each case, though, I was sternly instructed to stay IN the car.
The passengers were perplexed and stated that they were afraid to leave the vehicle. Suddenly, the front seat passenger (a male) who WAS wearing a seat belt, had his window smashed, was pulled from the car, was tasered and put into handcuffs within about 10 seconds.
Incidents such as these will create prejudice against police, regardless of race. When cops use excessive force, and people see this, they lose trust, which is so very important in civilized society. If the officers are punished/disciplined, we feel that the playing field is level. If we believe that they can get away with killing people, it’s got to make it difficult for good police officers.
And that’s my overarching point.
Thanks for your insightful questions, and I hope I haven’t been too wordy in my response.
Dtroutma over 9 years ago
Play one: in on incident of note, my partner and I (with guns etc) had arrested two of three guys for selling narcotics. As I was cuffing two, the third (much larger guy) hit my partner and took off. My partner chased him into the woods, I cuffed my guys to my car’s door handled and followed them. When I caught up, the big guy was beating my partner on the head with my partner’s flashlight. I took him down, and had dropped my radio. As I tried to reach and call for backup, he kept rising with my Kel light across his throat. The third or forth time I informed him of where I’d insert the light to choke him to death, and he stopped resisitng. We took my partner to the hospital and the bad guy, about 6’ 4" and 280 pounds, to jail. In booking him, he calmly asked, “If I’d gotten up again, you have killed me, right?” I equally calmly informed him, “Yes”.
NOTE: two of the three initiallky responded with good sense, complied, and served rather brief time for selling drugs. The third larger, and dumber guy, resisted, attacked a police officer, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, as some of my partners injuries could potentially have proven fatal, as in the case of Mr. Garner’s pre-existing physical problems, NOT caused by the contact with police. (aggravated, perhaps, but his death was NOT “caused” by police and he did NOT stop breathing, merely had difficulty, and he did NOT get choked, nor did he, as still being reported, die on the street.)
Dtroutma over 9 years ago
Justjoking: I too would like to see the PRE-contact conversation with the man. I had a guy tell me I didn’t have any “friends” available. He was 6.11 inches and I just stopped him for speeding and he, and his buddy and their girlfriends on the bikes, were being idiots. I pointed to my pocket, with the butt of a chief special, and informed him I had five “friends” who’d blow a hole in him big enough to drive his Honda 750 through. HE, then became, my “friend”, and told his buddy to just shut up and get his dirver’s license out. Yes, he was a black gentleman from Hayward, but I didn’t know that with helmet, jacket, etc., when I pulled him over. I was still polite, even in language and tone when pointing out the dhief special, which; even when the perpetrator becomes an idiot, the officers should NOT!
If the perp goes beyond that? Well, I think Missouri and New York cases both showed what happens. (I still have serious questions on MO. though. On BOTH sides.)
JPTewel over 9 years ago
Since when does selling a few loose cigarettes rise to such a level that you need 5 cops to arrest an individual? And how can they say he was resisting arrest? He wasn’t being aggressive. He wasn’t fighting with the arresting officer. He was bull rushed for no good reason whatsoever. And the cops ignored his pleas of “I can’t breathe”. Perhaps the officer didn’t use a choke hold but they did restrict his windpipe in some manner. It was a reprehensible act that could have been totally avoided by one cop issuing a ticket and having Mr. Garner move on. The alleged offense, after all, was a misdemeanor. There was no excuse for Mr. Garner’s death at all.
William Bednar Premium Member over 9 years ago
Come on, we all know who “those people” are, don’t we?
Cerabooge over 9 years ago
4my: knock it off. While Bryan Fischer (translation: no need to read another word) is probably happy to have you reprint his entire editorial, it stretches the “fair use” idea beyond breaking. Especially when you post it to multiple ’toons.
I Play One On TV over 9 years ago
No doubt: no one race or ethnicity has a monopoly on being scum; there’s plenty to go around, unfortunately. And as these incidents show, the same videos can still be viewed through different filters to come to different conclusions; if I am correct, this means that even if we do outfit police officers with personal cameras, the interpretation of what is being recorded may not be as cut and dried as we would like it to be.
Dtroutma over 9 years ago
Just saw the kid with the toy pistol was 12 years old, yes, but 5’7" and 195 ! pounds! The cops did immediately say they thought he was 18-20 years old. Which, btw, another inherent profiling thing people, not just cops, do, is that an 18 year old is perceived as much more of a THREAT, than a 12 year old.