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Thoughts on the Killing of Eric Garner
About five years ago I worked in a group home with ten developmentally disabled adults. That kind of human services field requires some training, because without meaning to, people, human beings, who often can’t care for themselves, can be accidentally killed by the staff.
The folks I worked with all had, and this is the technical term, profound mental retardation. It took different forms in different people, and some of the people I worked with had behaviors. So each resident had an individualized behavioral support plan. Something along the lines of “If they do this behavior X, you should do Y.” And the responses to a behavior always started with the least invasive and worked towards the most invasive.
We went through a training called SCIP, Strategies in Crisis Intervention and Prevention, which was mandated by the State of New York. It was a week long training, some of it in a classroom, and some of it in a room with mats on the floor. Put simply, SCIP teaches you how to take somebody down, when necessary, without killing them. It’s very easy to accidentally kill a person with developmental disabilities without meaning to. (In fact, the SCIP that I took was SCIP-R, R for revised, because it was modified based on the potential for accidental strangulation.)
The most simple thing was the one-person escort, where you guide someone out of a room. The final and most invasive thing was a full body wrap when you end up with your arms around a person, basically spooning them on the floor (thus, the mats). This is necessary because sometimes a resident could potentially be a danger to themselves or others.
In my personal experience, other than training, I never had to do anything like that. I never went further than the one-person escort. Why? Because most of SCIP was focused on the non-physical aspects. We were taught how to de-escalate a situation. Every situation is different, but I would have considered it a failure on my part if I ever had to SCIP (we used it as a verb) any of my guys. I wouldn’t have let it get that far.
And so we come to the killing of Eric Garner. I watched the video of this and it really bothered me. I realize that a police situation is different from a group home, but I also realize that not every police situation is the North Hollywood Shootout. That situation didn’t need to get physical.
If I done that in the group home to a resident, taken a person down like that, and put them in a choke hold, I would be in jail right now. Rightly so. The difference is that I was working in a culture where getting physical was the last resort. The NYPD is clearly a culture where non-compliance seems to be immediately met with physical violence. A week or two later, NYPD cops put a pregnant lady in a choke hold for cooking on the sidewalk. And the cops know that even when there’s video that they can get away with it. The incentive structure favors the cops getting physical right away, because as any child knows (until someone tells them not to) it’s a lot quicker and easier to hit someone to get your message across than to talk to them.
Maybe they couldn’t have talked Eric Garner down, but he was pleading with the cops before they wrestled him to the ground and choked him to death. He didn’t have a gun. He didn’t have a knife. He was just talking. It didn’t have to go down that way.
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As I understand it, summonses are an order to appear in court. Parking tickets and moving violation citations aren’t summonses, they’re fines issued on the spot.
In the case of moving violations, step one is to immediately cease and desist the violation. That happens when the police detain you or pull you over. If you refuse to be detained, refuse to cease the violation, or refuse to accept the fine without arguing in court, then they will likely arrest you. If you don’t correct your parking violation then eventually your car will be towed. So, no, arrest isn’t the immediate option, but whether it’s a summons or a fine the cooperation of suspect is required for it to occur peacefully.
I’m not sure of the exact progression in the Garner case, but we do know that the cops were there because the store owner called them and we do know that Garner was agitated and uncooperative. Whether he would have accepted either a summons or a citation similar to a moving violation is only speculation, but I can envision several scenarios which would thwart such a system generally: suspects walking around without ID, suspects refusing to give ID, suspects refusing to cease the activity that brought the complaint to begin with or that was observed by the officers of the law. Unlike with parking tickets or even automatic camera-generated red light tickets, there is no independent record that can be used to mail the fine notice. In the Garner case or just generally, there is no way to get the identity without the physical confrontation unless the suspect willingly complies with the lawful commands of the authority first to cease the activity and then to provide the identity so a fine can be issued.
Where is the hyperbole? Are you now saying that you don’t support universally handcuffing suspects on arrest or universally strip-searching suspects on intake to a jail? You described the procedures as common sense. Are you claiming that there are no such policies anywhere in America? Your comments appear to endorse the policy, so if you’re saying something else, then why don’t you just be clear about what you mean?
You seem to suggest in your previous reply that common sense dictates your position. I replied that common sense can support your position but it doesn’t dictate your position. Common sense would dictate only doing what is absolutely and minimally necessary to catch exactly the people who have weapons or contraband. In short, your position is your opinion, and your opinion doesn’t rebut concerns that some procedures are unnecessary, overused, or abused. If you just want to state your opinion instead of proving the necessity of the procedures, then why are you arguing? I clearly indicated that I’m not interested in convincing you.
Worse than not making a case for your opinion, you actually take what I plainly stated in clear support of my position when I wrote, “Generally, for non-violent offenses, police have the authority but not the duty to arrest,” and absurdly treat my observation as somehow your observation in support of your position when you wrote, “The police might not have the duty to arrest you in this case, but they have the authority.” The issue of existing authority and policy has never been in dispute. The dispute involved discretion. You claimed that the police had no discretion. You were wrong.
You don’t intend to answer because you don’t have an argument to offer. You want to use rhetorical ploys to caricature my position as when you suggest that I advocate holding court in the street, but you don’t want to actually defend your position that universal arrest for misdemeanors, univeral handcuffing on arrest, and universal strip-searching are necessary.
I think that you’re incorrect about the immediacy of fines for moving violations. I’ve never seen a traffic ticket that wasn’t contestable in traffic court. If you search Google for traffic court summons, you find plenty of links for different states and municipalities describing a citation as a summons that can be paid with a fine instead of contested in court.
The rest of the comment doesn’t have much to do with my position. The case of misdemeanors and moving violations are analogous. If someone can be identified, as in the case of moving violations, the person can just be issued a summons. I never said that a person cannot be asked for identification for issuing a summons, and I never said that a person must not be arrested if the person cannot be identified. If you can’t issue a summons, of course, to enforce the law, you have to make an arrest.
I’m happy to discuss my position, but to discuss my position, you have to faithfully represent my position. Let me say explicitly that I intend for the laws be fully enforced, and let me ask you to please, use your reason to fill in the trivial details of implementation of my position instead of asking me to supply the obvious answers. Now, do you have an objection to my position, or do you have a non-trivial question about my plan?
By the way, I received two traffic tickets in Chicago in the eighties and nineties, and in Chicago, the tickets were summonses that could be paid instead of contested. (I received one in California about ten years ago, but I don’t remember if it came with a court date.) In Chicago, every ticket that a traffic officer wrote on a particular day had the same traffic court session time and date. Traffic officers had scheduled court days for facing any driver who contested the alleged moving violation. Since Chicago is a large city, I think that the idea of traffic tickets as summonses isn’t too uncommon to take seriously.
Boy I love people who make these assertions without evidence provided to support them. It seems to happen more on Ricochet than anywhere else.
“BADEN: But I think the autopsy itself — the medical examiner did a great job on this. There’s 27 pages in the report. And the female (ph), she found that there were 10 hemorrhages on the inside of the neck, in the muscles of the neck, petechial hemorrhages in the eye, hemorrhage in the tongue. And those are all evidence of neck compression. You’re right, chokehold has many different meanings in all. What we’re concerned at autopsy is was there pressure on the neck.
“HANNITY: Right.
“BADEN: There was pressure on the neck and pressure on the chest….”
“…BADEN: That’s a distinction, but in this case, doesn’t make a difference to me because when we’re looking at the autopsy findings, the autopsy findings, whatever we call it, chokehold, headlock, there was enough pressure on the neck to prevent the blood flow…
Except Fred’s right and you’re the one spreading unfounded propaganda.
Nice post, Fred.
Furthermore, aside from citation, fine, and notification, there is a third person who made a valid complaint, so the unlawful activity needed to cease. Was Garner promising to stop selling the loosies? Even if he did promise to stop selling the loosies, was it a believable promise knowing his past offenses (I’m not sure what the cops knew about him at the time of the incident)? It seems to me like he was claiming to be doing nothing wrong and demanding t hat he be left alone. It would be malpractice for the cops to ignore the interests of the complainant for the sake of expediency.
So, your suggestion that a summons system could have prevented this altercation is questionable on two counts. 1) The need to procure information from an uncooperative suspect, and 2) the need for the offending activity to cease immediately and the chances of that occurring peacefully assuming the aforementioned uncooperative party. Of course you are correct that it could work, but that that is dependent on cooperation with the system. From what I’ve seen, Garner chose not to cooperate so it was unlikely under any system that this was going to end peacefully.
@Tuck
I believe you are thinking of alleged ischemia. Which is not choking. The former involves the blood supply, the latter the air supply. I repeat: Mr. Garner was not choked to death.
Of course, Gardner could have been uncooperative even if he were only issued a summons. To me, Garner appears to view the arrest as the distressing event and to not want to be arrested. If I am right, he might have complied quietly in issuing a summons, and as I have said before, if arrest itself were not so physically intrusive and distressing, he might have gone along quietly. My point isn’t to excuse all uncooperative people all of the time. My point is only that a great many people might feel burdened by a single arrest for a trivial offense not to mention a half a dozen offenses as in Garner’ case, and by using procedures that create a disincentive to break the law without causing an unnecessary physical confrontation, by for example, punitively fining the behavior after a finding of guilt in court, we could achieve the aim of preserving law and order without tending to cause deaths like Garner’s death.
Where we seem to disagree is over the avoidability of physical confrontation. Physical confrontation is avoidable whenever physical contact is not legally necessary. Let me ask you a question: if during an argument, you put your hands on a spouse to restrain the spouse, would your behavior represent physical confrontation? Of course, regardless of whether or not your spouse physically responds, your behavior would be physical confrontation. In Garner’s case, either the police department by policy or the police by choice escalated the situation and made the confrontation physical by arresting Garner. Most people posting in opposition to my suggestions seem to refuse to recognize the typical procedures surrounding arrest as physical confrontation and effectively attack Garner for being insufficiently submissive after the confrontation began.
Dr. Baden is the expert hired by the Garner family? Hardly an objective observer. That’s not to say he must be wrong or lying, only that his version should be taken with a grain of salt, and that other opinions should be sought out too. Also, the transcript from the Hannity show segment featuring Geraldo (pro-indictment, known for this kind of advocacy), Baden (pro-indictment, hired by the Garner family), and Bo Dietl (anti-indictment, former cop) is not exactly a detailed examination of the facts and nuances.
English is funny that way.
1993: “The New York City Police Department has issued an order banning the use of choke holds, the restraining maneuvers that cut off the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain and have been blamed in the deaths of suspects here and around the nation.”
Unfortunately they’ve not released the autopsy report. But the assertion made by others in this thread that he was not choked to death by the police is farcically wrong.
Again, you’re not supplying the obvious answers to your own questions. I’m not talking about never arresting people when they are engaged in an unlawful activity and obstinately refuse to stop. Are you suggesting that the police couldn’t have issued him a summons and threatened to arrest him if he continued to be the subject of complaints? None of your objections point to the intrinsic ineffectiveness of summonses. Your objections address a completely speculative bad reaction, and all of the claims could be made equally well about traffic tickets. Yes, someone could get a speeding ticket and speed away from the traffic stop. Should we start arresting all speeders because they might brazenly continue to speed after receiving a ticket?
In addition, the objections apply equally to arrest. Garner could have got out of jail, returned immediately to the same spot, and continued to break the law. Will you follow your train of thought to its logical conclusion? I suspect that you’ll recommend arrest over a summons because a person wouldn’t rationally want to suffer rearrest, but if you say as much, then you’re admitting my point that arrest could be intended to punish before conviction.
From the NYPD Patrol Guide:
Clearly the officers involved with Garner’s case hadn’t RTFM…
For the last time, the claim that the summons could have prevented (had the potential to prevent) the altercation is not questionable because of a counter-factual claim that Garner might have resisted giving the police his identification or might have continued to engage in illegal activity after the summons. A summons absolutely had the potential to avoid the altercation—summonses work to avoid altercations over traffic stops every day—and moreover, in Garner’s specific case, since the police did not try to issue him a summons, he could not have refused to cooperate and stop the illegal activity. Whether or not a summons would have prevented the confrontation is a separate issue depending on Garner’s subsequent reaction, which we cannot now know.
Yes, we disagree. Physical confrontation is only avoidable with the cooperation of the suspect. Would a summons system have worked? Yes, if Garner had cooperated by providing accurate identification and if Garner had cooperated by ceasing the acxtivity that generated the complaint in the first place. How likely is it that Garner would have cooperated on all of these counts? That’s just speculation, but 1) it seems that misdemeanors are handled all the time without anyone dying, and 2) Garner was determined to be uncooperative.
In the bit you quoted I asked you two questions about the Garner case specifically. What are the obvious answers I’m not providing?
No. I’m suggesting that Garner, in particular, was likely to have been uncooperative in any event. I also don’t know that an arrest attempt was the first response of the officers.
@Tuck
So, I guess that everyone who dies of an ischemic stroke (or obesity, heart disease, or diabetes) has choked to death. Novel use of the word, not one at the top of the definitions in my dictionary, but then Fred was probably just speaking colloquially.
“Are you suggesting that the police couldn’t have issued him a summons and threatened to arrest him if he continued to be the subject of complaints?”
Reportedly, Garner had been arrested 30 times, eight of them for the same offense. He evidently continued to be the subject of complaints. Since he repeatedly said he was doing nothing wrong, why would he sign for receipt of a citation?
Your suggestion about the Garner case specifically is itself an unknowable counterfactual. By definition it’s questionable – which was the extent of my critique as applied to the specific case.
Applied more generally, I’m not sure that traffic violations are comparable to other misdemeanors, based on the type of person likely to be an offender of each. Just about everyone has had traffic infractions, but other types of misdemeanors aren’t as common. Again it’s speculation, but I’d bet that there’s correlation between the less common misdemeanors and the type of person who might be uncooperative with any enforcement effort at all.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to refer to those questions. I just reflexively quoted the entire passage as I replied. I intended to refer to the questions implied by your objections. You wrote that the illegal conduct needed to stop immediately, which seems to raise the question, “What are the police to do if Garner continues the illegal conduct?” The implied question could be easily answered: if a summons didn’t end the problem for the foreseeable future, then obviously, the police should arrest him.
I didn’t answer your specific questions because they are irrelevant to my point. I claim that the summons could have avoided the outcome, not would have avoided the outcome, and that in this case, a summons represents a counter-factual scenario obviates the need to argue every contingency.
As for the quoted questions, in the video Garner protests that he didn’t do anything, and I would take the denial as evidence of a likelihood to agree not to continue engaging in criminal conduct that one already denies. In the video, the police don’t request a promise to stop, and I’ve never heard the police claim that they tried anything other than arrest. I don’t know if the police investigated his background, but I have also never heard that the arrest was motivated by repeat offenses instead of policy.
Because the alternative to accepting a summons would be arrest.
That Garner was uncooperative in a physical confrontation is not evidence that Garner would have been uncooperative in a purely bureaucratic encounter. The speculative objection that Garner might not have cooperated with issuing a citation cannot justify procedures. He never had the chance to comply with any less invasive enforcement technique, so there is no evidence that the technique wouldn’t have worked.
The following quote from a local NBC story nicely captures the vague nature of how Garner reportedly died (notice how the first paragraph misrepresents what’s said in the very next two paragraphs):
I’ve heard counterarguments since (miscellaneous sources, so no links) that the choke hold actually had little do with the death while the chest compression and Garner’s health trouble had more to do with it, and likely in an indirect way at that.
So the claim that Garner was choked to death is itself probably farcically wrong. “Contributed” – maybe that’s more accurate, but even that is beginning to look incorrect.
“He never had the chance to comply with any less invasive enforcement technique, so there is no evidence that the technique wouldn’t have worked.”
How do we know what happened before the video started?
I didn’t say that in Garner’s case, the summons would have worked. In general, summonses work every day to end criminal behavior, and I said that because in general summonses have worked in the past, the summons could have worked. The general potential of a summons to avoid physical confrontation is a fact witnessed by past experience and is not counter-factual. Summonses can work. That’s a fact. If you’re asserting that a summons could not have worked in Garner’s specific case, then you must be asserting some knowledge of how Garner would have reacted in the counter-factual scenario where he received a summons, for example, insight into his character proving that he would have been adversarial, and I don’t see evidence in support of the claim. If you do have the evidence, I’m happy to see it. Otherwise, I stand by my belief that a summons could have avoided the outcome in Garner’s case and could improve interactions between police and the public generally without sacrificing order.
I think that you’re just being argumentative. Do you really think that misdemeanor tax crimes correlate with violent resistance to the police? I don’t know you, but if you are a representative American, then you’re probably guilty of some tax or licensing violation. Every day, millions of people buy things on the web and don’t pay the required use tax. Every day, people win small amounts of money while gambling or make some money on an odd job and fail to declare the income to the IRS. Every day people pay cash to casual help in violation of legal requirements to pay benefits like Social Security. Are you really suggesting that such people will fight with police over a summons?
I still don’t understand your point.
In most of the cases you cite, summons are the intended outcome, and if you act belligerently towards the person giving the summons, you will get arrested. Given that enough time transpired from the initial contact to when the video started (which I admitted haven’t watched) as evidenced by the fact that multiple layers of back-up arrived, it seems FAR more likely that Garner was not being cooperative with the police.
When I get a speeding ticket, I am told to slow down. If I say “F— You, I am not going to slow down”, I fully expect to wind up in handcuffs.
Yes, we don’t know definitively what was said, but we know that backup was called, which STRONGLY implies that Garner was non-compliant and belligerent.
Your key assertion is that the police should have given him a summons and left him there violating the law. OK. That’s an opinion, but I don’t see the upside in allowing people to continue to violate the law and merely asking them to show up in court on a given day. If allowing X million people to continue to violate the law is the cost of preventing one belligerent from having complications from resisting arrest, I’m not willing to accept that cost even if you are.
It seems to me that if Garner was the type of person to quietly submit to a summons, he would be the type of person that would do what police told him to do, which would have saved his life.