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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.
Published in General
We don’t know. Maybe the police tried to issue Garner a summons. Maybe the police tried to frame Garner.
We can only discuss the claims in evidence, and obviously, at this point, I’m assuming that we have heard all of the significant claims about the story. If there were details of the incident likely to make the police look better, I suspect that we would have heard the details by now. The police have had months to suggest that they tried other procedures before the arrest, and as far as I know, no one has offered an accout of any approach to Garner other than arrest. I’ve never heard anyone suggest that the video isn’t representative of the entire encounter. Have you heard otherwise?
Obviously, my comments about Garner’s case depend on the facts as known. If the premises of the discussion are different, then obviously my argument doesn’t apply to Garner’s case, but the argument about the necessities of law enforcement remains unchanged. I said clearly before that I’m not accusing the police of wrongdoing, so I’m not sure what you’re trying to demonstrate. I have been arguing about the policy needs of law enforcement. Do you have a point about the necessities of law enforcement in general? Are you claiming that police never make fatal mistakes rooted in policy? What’s your point?
Why do you think the video starts at the initial encounter? Do you think the encounter started with six police officers on site?
It seems FAR more likely that the guy taking the video came across an in-process encounter and we missed the bulk of the interaction.
Your citation seems to argue against your assertion. Even though it says that choke holds are not limited to “compression of the throat and windpipe”, they don’t suggest anything else that may qualify. By this definition we might conclude a bear hug is a choke hold. If the definition was intended to prohibit all compression of the neck they could just say so. I’m no lawyer, (I know, that’s obvious), but when trying to interpret text I assume that if something could easily be clearly stated and is not, then that thing is not intended.
Now, I’ll admit that in conjunction with what you posted above about the 1993 ban, it seems likely they intended to ban holds restricting blood flow as well, but that citation reads like a press release. If chokehold isn’t defined any better than the above in the patrol manual, then that definition isn’t terribly damning (or useful).
Regarding the second paragraph, I watched the video again after reading your post because I didn’t recall seeing anybody sit or stand on Garner’s chest. My recollection was correct – nobody did. Pantaleo did end up on top of Garner in the course of the takedown, but he promptly rolled off and behind him. After that, Garner attempted to rise again, and another officer sat across Garner’s lower body, in the vicinity of his hips. All sustained upper body pressure I observed was being applied by officer’s hands.
In my posts, I linked to articles describing recent changes in policy in New York City. Until very recently, misdemeanor marijuana possession would have resulted in arrest, and the city just decided to start issuing summonses. What is your evidence that Garner was offered a summons or going to be offered a summons? If you don’t have a reference to an account in Garner’s case, then you’re just speculating. Obviously, my argument depends on the claims in evidence. I’m willing to discuss the claims in evidence now, not speculative claims.
Is anyone making the claim that Garner was asked to stop illegal conduct and refused? The video plainly shows Garner denying being involved in illegal conduct, so your analogy isn’t applicable. Watch the video. Garner didn’t admit to illegal conduct.
The implication is that Garner was big and resisted. The observation has no bearing on the issue of the summons. By all accounts, he was resisting arrest, and we don’t know how he would have reacted to a summons.
This is incorrect. I didn’t say that the police should give him a summons and leave him there to keep violating the law. I explicitly rejected the suggestion. I have said clearly that obstinately refusing to desist in illegal activity is grounds for arrest. I said that if he could have been stopped with a summons, then a summons would have been preferable to an arrest. Please, find an appropriate quote.
What is your point? First of all, people who might object to being touched get traffic tickets without incident every day. How you react to being handcuffed is not evidence of how you will react to a summons. The interactions are of entirely different kinds, and there is no connection between the two. I have been clear about my point. I didn’t say that a summons would have certainly worked. I said that I believe that a summons could have solved the problem. I laid out a clear vision of how a summons might work. I drew an analogy to traffic court summonses, which generally work every day. Do you have an general objection to summonses?
Ricochet’s own Jack Dunphy does not think excessive force was used and believes the encounter started long before the video started.
FWIW, I found his closing paragraph relevant to a discussion we had back at Ricochet 1.0.
In other words, don’t pass a law unless you are willing to kill for it.
First, I didn’t say that the video started at the beginning of the encounter. I said that there is no claim in evidence that the encounter involved any attempts to resolve the situation aside from an arrest. Is there evidence of some other effort? Second, where the video begins is irrelevant to my argument that a summons could have resolved the problem without incident.
Just to clarify, if evidence comes out that the police asked him to move along and he refused, then you will acknowledge that a summons would have made no difference since asking to cease illegal conduct is even less invasive than a summons?
“We can only discuss the claims in evidence, and obviously, at this point, I’m assuming that we have heard all of the significant claims about the story. If there were details of the incident likely to make the police look better, I suspect that we would have heard the details by now.”
Or perhaps the Grand Jury has. I just don’t accept that your two poster children require a change in overall arrest policy. One was a career petty criminal and the other a foreign national charged with visa fraud who was provided diplomatic immunity by her government the day before her indictment. In neither case have you provided the slightest evidence that these scofflaws would have behaved any differently had they been given a summons in lieu of arrest.
Have you read the grand jury testimony? Have you read any statement by any of the officers involved? How have you concluded there wasn’t some other effort?
UPDATE: I just watched the video linked in the Dunphy corner post. If I had to guess based solely on what was on the video, I would say the cops asked him to move along and he refused. They clearly were not looking to arrest him in the early seconds of the highly edited video (is there an unedited version somewhere?)
The trouble is that you’re applying generalized terminology to a specific case. That doesn’t work and you’re sending mixed signals. When you say that “It could have worked in the Garner case” then that’s the same as saying “it would have worked in the Garner case”. Otherwise it’s a content-free statement; after all, many things could have happened instead of what actually happened.
As I said already, I am speculating that a summons would not have worked in Garner’s specific case, not asserting it. It’s also not clear whether an arrest attempt was the first response by the officers or whether they were pursuing some other resolution.
Of course, I would acknowledge the fact. I have never written one word condemning the police actions—I have only said that the outcome could be the result of bad policies—so certainly evidence more adverse to Garner would a fortiori excuse the police. I have said as much from the beginning.
Many people seem to be arguing that issuing a summons couldn’t have worked. Will you acknowledge that if Garner was never offered a summons and simply told to submit to arrest, then the situation might have spiralled out of control because of the initial choice of tactics and might have been resolved peacefully by using something like a summons instead of arrest? In addition, can you acknowledge that aside from the common understanding of events being the inspiration for my critique of policing policies, the details of Garner’s case do not generally affect the validity of the suggestions?
Yes, I do believe that, depending on the misdemeanor. I didn’t restrict my statement to tax crimes. Besides, that it was merely a tax crime is itself speculation. Do we know where he got the loosies to sell? It strikes me as a bad bargain to first buy a full pack at regular NY prices.
FWIW, I see no evidence that giving him a summons would cause Garner to cease the illegal activity, and your strategy only works if issuing a summons would result in Garner ceasing the activity.
He had been arrested 30 plus times and his wife said the police called him “Cigarette Man” because of his long history of breaking this particular law.
I think they should have just told him to move along and get out front of the store that called to complain about him. My guess is, this is what they initially asked him to do. If their first interaction was to arrest him, I would agree that is overreacting, but as I said a few posts back, my read of the video is they only sought to arrest him after he refused to comply with their requests.
Regardless, I would not issue a summons to someone that has been arrested for the some offense multiple times (and is, in fact, currently out on bail for the same crime) and hope that a summons will cause him to cease the illegal act. He either complies immediately or gets arrested.
This appears to your first post in this thread. It’s clear from this post that you didn’t watch the video and don’t know much about Garner’s prior record.
According to this article
So, whatever Garner was, it is clear that he had a history of using his size as a physical threat. The video also shows clear signs of agitation.
The article alleges that “NYPD sources confirm that Eric Garner was a player in an organized crime cigarette smuggling syndicate, Gotnews.com has learned.” While that may be difficult to verify, what is verifiable is this section.
This history of possession of untaxed cigarettes and being out on jail explains why a summons wouldn’t work. The officers would need to frisk him to determine if he was in possession of untaxed cigarettes. A summons would be useless unless the officers were able to gather evidence, which required physical contact.
Based on your initial post in this thread, the cops did exactly what you wanted them to do.
Anyway, thanks for encouraging me to educate myself on the issue. I came into this discussion thinking that the officers were in the wrong, which seems to be the consensus even in the conservative press. I now think the officers acted appropriately. After watching the video and learning of his background will cigarette smuggling, I think the police were sufficiently deferential and I think Garner likely knew that if he let the officers frisk him, they would find evidence that would look wind up putting him back in jail for breaking the terms of his bail and likely put him away in his upcoming court case on the same crime.
I’m certainly willing to change my mind if new evidence is presented, but I think there is enough out there to draw a reasonable conclusion.
I say this and acknowledge that in some perfect alternative universe, the police COULD have issued a summons for a crime with no evidence and Garner COULD have decided that, given his bad health and currently bail status, he should just take the summons and shut up. I put the odds about at something less than the odds of me winning the mega-millions lottery.
Again, your speculations about the grand jury presentation don’t have any bearing on the discussion.
You’re dishonestly using language that assumes a conclusion not in evidence. Garner never got a day in court, so we don’t know if he was guilty. The Indian diplomat was charged with visa fraud, but she disputed the charges, which were never adjudicated. A word like scofflaws is part of an attempt to sneak a conclusion past the reader. They were accused, not tried and found to be guilty. Their presumptive guilt cannot be used to justify the practices. The practices have to be just without reference to guilt, but nice try.
I didn’t say that only two cases require a change in policy. I said that the two cases are examples illustrating a problem with policing. I do not have to prove that my recommendations would have made a difference in the cases to criticize current policy. In fact, I don’t have to use even one case to criticize current policy and practices. Current policy and practices can be unnecessary or unjust without any deaths or other negative consequences.
We’ve had this discussion on another thread. Of course, you are free to be satisfied with the policies. I’m not trying to convince anyone who thinks that current policies are humane and would be satisfied with having their own mothers, fathers, or children subject to the treatment without a specific justification. I am arguing the point to people who sense that something must be wrong, and judging from the public reaction, I think that there are a great many people who feel like something unjust happened in Garner’s case and like the outcome in Garner’s case was unnecessary. You can tell them that their sense of justice is unimportant and that they have no cause to be upset, but that’s just your opinion. You haven’t proven that the the more humane alternatives will not work, so I’m going to try to speak to other people’s legitimate concerns and present the alternatives.
Actually, I think they do. The grand jury was presented with evidence that you don’t have, information that is relevant to a determination of whether the police were justified in their desire to detain Garner and the events leading up to the attempting to forcibly put him in handcuffs.
You have assumed a version of events that corresponds with your beliefs and have accused people that reached different conclusions of being dishonest. You keep wanting to have both sides of the coin. You don’t want to go on record saying that a summons would work, but you keep talking about it a proposed solution to the situation (against all the actual evidence – the evidence in the public domain and the evidence in the grand jury that you think is somehow irrelevant to the discussion).
Not that it matters, but I’ve been taken to jail twice in my life for youthful indiscretions. I never thought being handcuffed and taken to the station was inappropriate. If I resisted arrest, I would expect to be worse for the wear. If either of my sons did something stupid, I would fully expect them to be handcuffed and taken to jail. My few nights in the clink were an important part of realizing that I didn’t want to spend any more time there. Garner apparently had the exact opposite reaction. FWIW, I think the biggest problem in Garner’s case is that we allow someone that had been arrested more than 30 times to walk around the city of New York intimidating business owners and their patrons.
But, we will apparently continue to disagree on that.
I wrote another article on the event, so your assumption that I didn’t see the video and didn’t know about Garner’s history is incorrect. I knew. GotNews is a blog, and your claim that Garner was violent with local shopkeepers and part of a criminal syndicate doesn’t appear in any news source that I can find. I don’t believe the report. Do you have a reference to another news source? I’m not picky about media, but a blog is simply not a reliable source. Can you find a professional news enterprise as a source?
I never ruled out searches or frisking suspects when required. I clearly said that necessary procedures are well within the bounds of acceptable policing. Arrest and search are independent acts.
By your own admission his verifiable record includes only non-violent, petty crimes. If every single offense carried some substantial fine, at some point, a rational actor would choose to stop the behavior instead of incurring fines greater than the profit possible from the illicit trade. You don’t prove that a summons wouldn’t have made him come to court, pay his fines, and eventually give up the trade. The facts of the case do prove that jail was no special deterrent to allegedly reoffending. The threat of arrest might have been distressing enough to cause the struggle that led to his death, but arrest clearly wasn’t stopping him from allegedly reoffending. The police probably could have given him a summons and confiscated his untaxed cigarettes three times for every one time that they arrested him. Why wouldn’t confiscating the cigarettes and citing him on the street more agressively have been a better deterrent than sending him to jail for a few hours?
Anyway, believe what you want. I’m not interested in persuading you about Garner, and if you approve of the policies on their face, then I’m not interested in persuading you about anything at all.
Yes, because all of those people have a policeman’s arm around their neck, and another policeman sitting on top of them.
If you’re attempting to prove you’re an idiot, you’ve succeeded. Congratulations.
So, given the business owner’s complaint and the history of selling untaxed cigarettes, do you think a physical search was appropriate here to determine if Garner was in possession of untaxed cigarettes?
If not, why not? What evidence would you expect the police officer to present in court after Garner received the summons that you claim he should have received.
I will work on this right after I prove God doesn’t exist. That important proving of a negative seems to have more important ramifications than trying to prove that if Garner had been given a summons, he would have given up the sale of untaxed cigarettes.
With this, I think we have reached the end of rational discussion on this topic.
Good night.
So clearly the police should be allowed to execute repeat offenders, as they did in this case. Is that really your argument?
How about, “Why the heck does anyone think it’s OK for the police to kill someone over cigarettes?”
The fact that that’s illegal is the crime here, not that he was selling them.
I find it incredible that a bunch of so-called conservatives are defending this incredibly fascistic action in the city of New York.
I retract my previous post. We have NOW reached the end of rational discussion on this topic.
Good night.
The actual contents of the grand jury presentation might be relevant and new—who knows?—but his speculation about the contents of the grand jury presentation is not relevant. His speculation is not a factual claim in evidence, and the grand jury presentation is not in evidence. There’s simply no factual claim to discuss.
In any case, I didn’t take issue with the grand jury findings, and I was explicit that the grand jury findings could very well be consistent with the law and the public account. I made the statement in bold a long time ago. Why do you keep asking me about Garner? I didn’t accuse the police of a crime or malice. I said that the procedures are a problem.
There is nothing contradictory about proposing a possible solution to a problem without having conclusive proof that the solution will work. Every day, medical doctors use the same approach to solving problems. In my separate article, I said that I see Garner’s death as unnecessary and undesirable as an outcome, a problem. I proposed an idea to solve the problem. I explained that if Garner was largely distressed about the procedures surrounding arrest, then reason suggests that the solution had the potential to produce a peaceful outcome. Of course, if my diagnosis of Garner’s problem with arrest is incorrect, then the solution might not have helped Garner. Regardless of the effect on Garner, the suggestions would humanize policing for a lot of other people, so I think that the suggestions are worth of considering. I think that you’re misreading me as some apologist for criminals or enemy of police when I could hardly be more sympathetic to law enforcement. (In 1992, I lived in Los Angeles during the trial of the officers who arrested Rodney King, and I was one of the only people I knew to predict the acquital and understand and approve of the reasoning.) There is obviously a lot of distrust of police across the political spectrum. You can’t wish it away. You can bury your head in the sand and pretend that the distrust doesn’t exist, but if you pretend that there is no problem, you’ll surrender the diagnosis of the problem to the hucksters who would chalk up the problem to racism or some other improbable cause. I’m advocating my position because the alternative is to allow people to fix blame in the wrong places, which in the end, will be worse for police and law enforcement in general. Do you want to see the grand jury system abolished? Do you want police to be forced into the risk and expense of jury trials instead of designing policies to innoculate police against charges of excessive force, brutality, or racism?
Your story does matter. It shows your bias against believing that a person could be arrested but be innocent of any crime. I don’t have any problem with punishing the guilty, but I don’t see any point to needlessly humiliating people before a conviction. (Are you one of those people who thinks that being the target of a false rape accusation would be edifying? I hope not.) I was arrested once in Chicago. I had argued with someone in the neighborhood, and to get even, the person pressed a malicious charge of criminal destruction of private property against me. The charge was a complete fabrication—the complainant just wanted to hassle me, and the charge was ultimately dropped when he didn’t bother to come to court for my trial date—so I have seen the system from the point of view of someone wongly arrested. I didn’t resist arrest, but I did find the process humiliating and largely unnecessary. In fact, as a matter of policy, the Chicago police took my shoelaces to prevent me from hanging myself, and when the police confiscated my shoelaces, they were essentially recognizing that the entire process could be very distressing. Obviously, the Chicago police could anticipate someone overreacting, and I could easily image someone overreacting.
You know that I don’t accept the account of Garner as bully. We really disagree about what would be just if Garner were either innocent or basically non-violent.
I don’t know the law, but if the complaint gave the police probable cause for a search, then the search was both necessary and appropriate. Is the complaint probable cause? I would assume that the compaint is sufficient, but I don’t know.
As a side issue, I don’t think that possessing untaxed cigarettes is a crime. Selling untaxed cigarettes was the alleged crime. I suppose that the complaint combined with the possession of cigarettes might be enough to get a conviction, but wouldn’t proof require either a purchase of untaxed cigarettes by an undercover officer or testimony by a customer or accomplice? I know that Garner was working with a public defender to fight the charges, so either he was innocent or thought that the state’s case was weak.
Since New York has Indian reservations on Long Island, I assume that he bought the cigarettes from an Indian reservation. There are a lot of reasonable answers other than theft or hijacking. If he was a thief or hijacker, why was he selling his cigarettes himself instead of delegating the sales to street dealers, and why didn’t the police pursue him for a more serious charge?
As I said before, there is no evidence that arrest would stop Garner, either. In fact, the evidence is that arrest wasn’t a deterrent at all. Had Garner been convicted or paid a fine yet? Why not try something different like quickly adjudicated and accumulating fines?
All of the reporting suggest that there was a crackdown on the trade in progress. Here is a Breitbart article referring to a Washington Times report indicating that Philip Banks, a highly place officer, ordered the crackdown days before Garner’s death. Because of the reports of a crackdown, I don’t consider the suggestion that the police merely told him to move along to be likely, and the police never indicated that because of Garner’s behavior, the conflict escalated from a simple order to move along to an arrest.
I’m not sure what you’re arguing about. You’re speculating that a summons wouldn’t have worked. I’m speculating that a summons would have worked. Up to this point, we have a difference of opinion. In addition, I’m asserting that summonses have a history of effectiveness and that we can therefore conclude that a summons could have worked. The distinction is not trivial. Saying that something could have worked is not the same as saying that something would have worked. If I say, “If the car had hit you, you could have died,” the sentence means that there was a possibility that you would have died. If I say, “If the car had hit you, you would have died,” the sentence asserts that you would certainly have died.
Uh no you are farcially wrong. The autopsy showed no damage to the trachea. The video shows the hold on for no more then 10-15 seconds. He never loses consciousness, and afterward he is clearly talking (“I can’t breathe”). That actually proves his airway was not occluded, ie not choking, he has “air hunger’ the sensation of not getting enough air, and common in all kinds of cardio-pulmonary conditions.. He doesn’t lose consciousness until he is on the ground in a semi prone position for awhile. That position in a guy his size is enough to cause respiratory compromise. It’s not the cops fault the guy is a medical bomb waiting to explode based on his body habitus and multiple co-morbidities. I have far more heartburn with the EMTS who arrive and seem to treat a guy who is unresponsive at that point in a very casual manner.
You accuse someone else of being an idiot then make this statement.
Bravo.
Normally, I’d resent being called an idiot. But then I consider the source.