After the evens in Ferguson and the blatant manipulation of the grand jury process to basically insure that no indictment would be handed down, it's stunning to see the same apparent result happen in New York City where police who basically strangled to death Eric Garner, a 43-year-old asthmatic, will faces no charges whatsoever - not even involuntary manslaughter. No charges at all. It's sadly part of a long trend where police avoid the charges that would be handed against the rest of us. And for many blacks, it is yet further proof that their lives mean nothing in America's justice system. A column in the Washington Post looks at this latest grand jury fiasco. Here are highlights:
After a New York grand jury failed to indict a police officer in the death of a Staten Island man, protesters hit the streets of Manhattan and at least seven other U.S. cities. There were no reports by early morning Thursday of significant violence, in contrast to the looting and arson that broke out Nov. 24 in Ferguson, Mo., after a grand jury there declined to indict Darren Wilson, the officer who fatally shot unarmed teen Michael Brown on Aug. 9.
A wave of protests erupted from Manhattan to Oakland, Calif. Thousands in New York marched in support of Eric Garner, a 43-year-old asthmatic who died after being put in a chokehold by officer Daniel Pantaleo on July 17.
They shut down the Lincoln Tunnel. They shut down the West Side Highway. They shut down the Brooklyn Bridge, where officers threatened them with arrest if they did not move as a helicopter hovered above.
And they chanted the slogan heard around the country after Brown was killed by Wilson in Ferguson — “Hands up, don’t shoot” — as well as what may have been Garner’s last words: “I can’t breathe.”
“The lives of black young men, black children, they matter,” protester Florence Johnson told CBS at Times Square.
Garner, a father of six and grandfather of two, died July 17 after Officer Daniel Pantaleo placed him in what appeared to be a chokehold during an arrest that was recorded on videos that have been widely seen and have contributed to the public anger.
The grand jury decision that prompted Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to announce the opening of a federal civil rights investigation.
President Obama, speaking earlier at an event in Washington, declined to comment specifically about the Staten Island case, referring instead to his plans to promote better relations between police and those they serve.
“I came down here because I’m disgusted about what happened,” said Edward Collins, a 19-year-old protester, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s beyond a race thing to me. No matter what race you are, no one has the right to murder you.”
“Black lives do not matter in this system,” Dean Steed, one of the organizers of about 150 protesters in Atlanta, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “And we’re out here for black lives.”
We are certainly providing America's enemies with plenty of propaganda to throw back when America tries to criticize human rights abuses in other countries. I suspect that Vladimir Putin has a huge smile on his face right now.
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