Yesterday’s grand jury decision in the death of Eric Garner of Staten Island is a world more intriguing than the yawningly phony Mike Brown kerfuffel.
We watched the video repeatedly at home last evening.
At a glance – not after consideration – it appeared Mr. Garner was bullied to his death, surrounded as he was by NYPD cops. At a glance, he engenders sympathy because the cops out-number him about 5-to-1, unlike the arrogant Mike Brown who played chicken with a cop.
Observing the takedown of Mr. Garner on video logically would spark a rush even from a cynical, ice-hearted left-winger.
Astonishingly, Mr. Garner’s crime was selling individual cigarettes. Why was he? Per pack in New York, cigarettes run to $11 a pack.
Being arrested for selling cigarettes one at a time surely is a punch line, the equivalent of arresting a Girl Scout. Right?
Selling individual cigarettes hardly seems cause for a covey of cops to encircle a suspect, even if, at 400 pounds, he was twice the size of an average man.
Turns out that 43-year-old Mr. Garner was not a stranger to law enforcement. He had not just randomly parachuted onto the scene from the skies over Staten Island.
He never has murdered anyone. However, we learn now that “dozens” of arrests for petty crimes cloud his record, severely weakening his case. By this stage of his crime-time career, even a robot would have learned.
Mr. Garner was not a Mensa student. Further, he could not have lived long enough, under idyllic circumstances, to become one.
Chattering the whole time he was being arrested, as if he were earning a dollar a letter, Mr. Garner had crossed swords with cops often enough to know rule No. 1: Shut your mouth. Instead, he agitated.
Even though Mr. Garner was no virgin in this situation, he behaved ignorantly. It cost him his life.
The autopsy showed this hugely overweight father of a flock died from a heart attack and asthma. His asthma caused him to belch repeatedly, desperately, “I can’t breathe.” It also ended his slow-motion life, needlessly.
Mr. Garner badgered the cops.
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“Every time you see me you want to arrest me. I’m tired of this. This stops today…I didn’t do nothing… I’m minding my business, officer…”
For the obsessed bean-counters in Newspaperland, the Garner grand jury was evenly divided between minorities and whites.
Numerous times they watched a video that in this case at least was superior to a body camera. They concluded, with a tinge of sadness blended with Mr. Garner’s undisciplined behavior, that the cop should not be indicted.
