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Judge Naplitano Overruled
While driving home from work Wednesday evening, I listened to Hugh Hewitt interviewing Andrew Napolitano, the former judge who now serves as a legal analyst for the Fox News Channel. Among the topics discussed was the day’s news that a Staten Island grand jury had declined to indict an NYPD officer in the death of Eric Garner.
Recall that Garner died July 17 after struggling with several NYPD officers who were trying to arrest him for selling “looses,” or individual, untaxed cigarettes. The incident was recorded on video by a witness. One of the officers, Daniel Pantaleo, can be seen in the video briefly wrapping his arm around Garner’s neck as Garner is wrestled to the ground. But for the unfortunate outcome, it appeared to me to be an unremarkable application of force against a resisting individual, one whose large size made it especially difficult to get him into handcuffs. (I wrote about the incident in an August column for PJ Media.)
Judge Napolitano expressed surprise and disappointment that the grand jury did not indict Officer Pantaleo. “I think it is clearly a case for criminally negligent homicide,” he said. “I think that the use of deadly force – this is not Ferguson, Missouri. This is not somebody wrestling for your gun. This is not where you shoot or be shot at. This is choking to death a mentally impaired, grossly obese person whose only crime was selling cigarettes without collecting taxes on them. This does not call for deadly force by any stretch of the imagination.”
A bit later in the interview, Napolitano summed up the reasons for his disappointment at the grand jury’s decision. “In a nutshell,” he said, “because it was all on tape, because there was no resistance, because there was use of deadly force for the most minor of civil violations, failure to collect taxes by selling individual cigarettes to local bums.”
Bilge.
Napolitano’s assertion that there was “no resistance” on Garner’s part is belied by the tape, which clearly shows him refusing to be handcuffed. And Napolitano’s characterization that the force used on Garner was “deadly” is also without foundation. Though Officer Pantaleo’s arm can be seen around Garner’s neck, the tape is far from dispositive that the man was choked at all. If he was, it was for no more than ten seconds, not long enough to cause unconsciousness, let alone death. Furthermore, Garner’s autopsy revealed no damage to his throat or neck as one would expect to find in a choking death. The force used on Garner was no more deadly than that used in many arrests made throughout New York City every day. Garner’s medical condition being what it was, he might just as easily have died from running up a flight of stairs (not that he seemed disposed to it).
Napolitano is on firmer ground in his criticism of the law for which the officers sought to arrest Garner, but that is a matter for the people of New York to resolve through the democratic process. As the law now stands, police are sometimes called to act as enforcement agents for the nanny state New York has become. Don’t put a law on the books if you don’t want the cops to enforce it, and don’t ask them to enforce it if you’re not willing to accept the fact that violence will sometimes occur when people resist that enforcement.
The place for Garner to argue his case was not on the sidewalk but in a courtroom. He learned this lesson too late, but when a police officer tells you you’re going to jail, you are going to jail. The only question then remaining is whether you will be taken there directly or with an intervening stop at a hospital.
Published in General
Now, having said all of that, I do believe that these days police are a little too quick to resort to physical confrontation. The training that they receive is probably designed more for their safety and less concerned with the subject’s.
I sympathize with the difficultly they must face day-in and day-out confronting all kinds of people, but the job comes with some inherent risk. Take the appropriate precautions, but we can’t settle for an “arrest now, ask questions later” policy… which is what is seems like it being taken by more and more police.
Not according to the grand jury.
So, are you saying that the grand jury – who heard ALL the evidence, including watching the video – simply disregarded the law? Do you think it’s possible they know something you don’t?
Oh… and being against “policy” is quite a bit different from being against “the law”.
I found this discussion of the hold used interesting. Also, as Jack Dunphy wrote, “the tape is far from dispositive that the man was choked at all. If he was, it was for no more than ten seconds, not long enough to cause unconsciousness, let alone death.” I assume that such matters were considered by the Grand Jury during its deliberations.
Of course it is certain they know things I do not.
I watched the video. I did not hear everything.
If I was in that situation, I would have offered the following:
Perhaps they did this.
I know that police officers like keeping people on the ground. If they had just cuffed him and stood him up, he probably would have been fine.
Conor Freidersdorf — hold your applause — has a good piece on the history of choke holds in NYC policing. I confess I’m not completely up on my terminology on this, but it seems that what the officer did was not permitted by NYPD regulations.
While he was on the ground, I think Mr. Garner suffered a heart attack brought on by the stress of his confrontation with police. Pulling a heart attack victim to his feet probably wouldn’t have helped.
Could be. As de Sono points out, we do not have the autopsy report.
Yet, nobody started CPR or called for a defibrillator in the video we have. Everyone is very casual except about observers.
Haven’t watched the video you linked (45 minutes? Good Lord) but I wholly agree that it’s not accurate to say that Garner was chocked to death, as a lot of protesters have said or implied.
But that’s not to say that the choke-hold was a responsible — or the best — method to gain compliance.
Forget about choke holds, I would think having several people on your back would make it a bit hard to breathe. And is the proper response to someone crying, “I can’t breathe!” to push their face into the pavement? Or was that just done out of anger and malice?
Z in MT
These sorts of laws are not liberal, they are statist. Bloomberg is a centrist statist. These are the sorts of laws and petty tyrannies that our founding fathers started the revolution over.
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This is exactly why I prefer the accurate and (finally) stylish term Progressives. This is a well-defined political movement, and the Democrat Party is full of it. Liberal? Anywhere except modern America, that would mean Republican. Well, used to.
Sigh.
Andrew McCarthy — of whom I’m generally not the world’s hugest fan — has a very good piece up on NR:
This is becoming tiresome. So many uninformed comments! We aren’t privy to all the facts as the grand jury was. They made a logical, data-driven decision, and everybody wants to opine. Read Ben Shapiro on this case, then start re-opining.