There have been a few people who are outraged by Garner, and not by the NYPD shootings, and frankly something is wrong with them. There have been far too many people though outraged by the NYPD shootings, and then try to justify Garner's death. I don't understand that, and frankly I don't want to understand that backward thinking. You don't have to be okay with everything in Garner's life, nor do you have to even convict the police officer who choked him to death in your own mind, to understand the Garner death is unwarranted. Assume the worst here- that Garner was a petty criminal, and that he was selling loose cigarettes- that is not a crime we punish with death in the United States. Surely, once Garner cried out that he couldn't breathe while on the ground, there was good reason to let up on the choke hold he was in. Frankly, we saw the entire incident on video. Garner was upset that he was being bothered by the police officer, but he wasn't threatening anyone in the video. The offense he was being accused of was not a serious crime that would land him in prison. Despite Garner's protests, the officer could have written him a ticket or charged him without the chokehold. It's likely that the officer who applied the chokehold did not mean to cause him long-term harm, let alone death. The entire situation clearly escalated well beyond what was necessary. I do not understand the push to argue the entire incident was somehow "justified."
With all of that aside, this was not a good weekend for race-relations. There are now accusations flying around that somehow the people who protested, chanting "I can't breathe," and wanting justice for Eric Garner, are somehow responsible for, or for creating the atmosphere for, the deaths of Officers Liu and Ramos. I'll leave aside the notion that the "blood is on the hands" of the Mayor for a moment and stick to the protestors. The idea that the protestors are somehow responsible for the shootings of two police officers is preposterous. It lays blame where it doesn't belong, and it ignores the legitimacy of what they are saying.
The gunman was not a protestor. Yes, there were a few violent protestors, as there will be in crowds numbering in the thousands, but most of them were peaceful. The gunman wasn't in New York for any of the protests, and came up from Baltimore the day he committed his horrible acts. He acted alone, shot his girlfriend as well, and basically was just a bad person. He didn't need to have "an atmosphere" of violence. I can't speak to the officer shot in Florida, or the shooter's intentions there, but in this case, trying to tie the shooting of the NYPD officers to the protestors is a stretch of the imagination that goes too far. The protestors are protesting death through civil disobedience, not rioting in the streets and killing people. It's a far stretch to tie them, and their legitimate concerns, to murders.
It's not really any better when people try to blame politicians, as Rudy Giuliani is somehow attempting to with President Obama. That's so insane, it's stupid. While I can understand anger at Mayor de Blasio for appearing to side with Eric Garner against the police officer, even there he did not say anything that would have encouraged this kind of nut. In no way does he have "blood on his hands."
In fact, no one does here. While this is horribly tragic, the people exercising their free speech rights in the streets of New York, people who are airing very true and legitimate grievances with policing in America, are not in any way, shape, or form responsible. Those who say the protestors are in some way responsible operate in a non-reality, with no justice system to speak of. It is correct to protest a system that still has wrongs in it, and still needs more reform. To say otherwise is to be incorrect.
Let me just close with this- there are those asking why the protestors are not protesting the death of the police too. I would tend to agree with that sentiment, as the police deserve the same public support right now. The problem with that line of thinking though is that their killer is dead today, while we are consistently seeing the killers of black and brown people walk free in the end. We see Michael Brown, who woke up on the day of his death having no criminal record, vilified and called a "thug," we are seeing Eric Garner referred to as a "petty criminal," and hear attempts to vilify the Cleveland victims as "dangerous." We're hearing that Officers Liu and Ramos are heroes. They are. We'd like to see these other folks at least treated as human beings though, and not "demons." We'd like to see the grand jury system stop being used to avoid trials by a jury of peers. While we're all mourning the senseless and disgusting murder of two good public servants of the NYPD this week, let's also ask for a little bit of justice to be injected into the justice system.
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