Eric Garner, an obese, asthmatic, 43 year old black man, was choked to death by police officers earlier this year. Last night, the grand jury looking into charges against the arresting officer failed to indict. Although there is absolutely no connection between this grand jury and the grand jury in Ferguson, one can't help but to notice the eerie parallels.
The Garner killing was recorded on video by a camera phone. In it, there is no mistake that Garner is telling the four officers holding him down that he "can't breathe." In fact, he said it eleven times before dying of asphyxiation. Michael Brown's confrontation with police, of course, was not on video but, even if it had been, the story would've been very different. Michael Brown stole some cigarillos from a convenience store, confronted an officer in his car, got shot and continued to refuse to surrender. Garner, on the other hand, did in fact have his "hands up," as four or five officers tackled him to the concrete. One put his knee on Garner's head, pressing his face into the road. Another sat on his back, barring his shoulders, and yet another sat on his legs, cuffing him. Garner died.
When you look at the video, it is brutal, but it is also a fact that Garner did not surrender, resisted a little, and the officers appear to be using force that was basically reasonable to restrain a very large man. It's not like they hit him with batons or shot him, and most people understand that arresting someone can be violent. Taking a man to the ground because he refuses to surrender is ugly, and sometimes things go wrong.
Most of us understand that sometimes the police need to use force. Most Americans realize that police are out there to protect us and our property, and most of us feel comfortable knowing the police are patrolling our neighborhoods. When really bad things are happening, we want a professional, trained, effective police force to intervene on our behalves and, typically, if the crime is serious enough, we will forgive the police for making a few mistakes. For example, if Eric Garner had been killed while raping an 11 year old girl, no one would bat an eye. If Eric Garner was choked to death after beating an old lady with a club, few of us would say a word.
But that's not what happened. Eric Garner was choked to death because he was selling loose cigarettes to people on the street. That's right, he died because he was selling some cigarettes. I made the point in my last Ferguson article that we now have so many silly little laws that the police basically have plenary power to stop you, frisk you and probably arrest you for some highly subjective "suspicious activity" that you may or may not be engaged in. This will eventually lead to disaster in a free society. More laws means more officer-citizen interactions. More officer-citizen interactions means, statistically, more confrontations that lead to injury or death. Accidentally using excessive force to stop a man from raping a woman on the street is more or less acceptable to most Americans. Accidentally killing a man for violating the "loose cigarettes" law is not.
Deaths like this one highlight the absurdity of our current system of laws. Whether it's stop and frisk in black neighborhoods or DUI checkpoints in white suburbia, the government's reach is now absurdly broad. The government, and consequently the police, are viewed with suspicion in many neighborhoods, both black and white, because of the enormous scope of the powers they wield. Sadly, I would wager that most Americans feel better if they can get to and from work without seeing a police cruiser on the road or some kind of checkpoint or speed trap. Whereas there once was a time when officers were members of the community and had personal relationships with the citizens, now the citizenry would rather just avoid contact with the police altogether. That is not the fault of the citizenry. It is the result of modern police tactics, too many laws, and a change in the law enforcement mission.
The fact of the matter is, the police have become militarized to the point that they are more of an "intimidation force" than a police force in many urban areas. Most police commissioners admit this. They admit using SWAT teams to serve arrest warrants in the middle of the night because they want to "surprise the suspect," use "overwhelming force," and "intimidate" any bystanders that may want to intervene. That's fine when you're arresting a violent criminal, but when that force is overused, it is viewed as excessive. Putting that aside, most communities aren't interested in having their communities policed by SWAT teams dressed like Navy Seals carrying M-16's and grenade launchers. It just isn't very friendly.
More importantly, however, if you've been vested with the extremely broad power to basically confront anyone you want, and you've been given a gun to do it with, then there is no longer any room for error. This is not uncommon for professionals. Lawyers, for example, have no room for error. You miss a deadline, have a mistake on your calendar, have an employee mistakenly disclose something, you're done. Doctors have no room for error. You nick that artery, you kill the patient, and you may lose everything. Pilots have no room for error. Soldiers have no room for error. And now, because of the broad power modern police have to use force to confront individual citizens over minor infractions, they too have no room for error.
To that end, police need to be better vetted, better trained and much better paid. We already expect a high level of professionalism from our police officers, but they are trained and paid at much lower levels more akin to civil servants. This has to change and there's no reason why it can't. As citizens, we should want only the smartest, highest trained, most highly incentivized police officers on our streets. Whatever the cost, it is worth it.
Then, as citizens, we need to insist that our elected officials stop passing laws to address every perceived ill in society. Selling loose cigarettes is perhaps the silliest law I've ever seen used in the modern era to justify the violent arrest of a person. Perhaps the police acted appropriately under the circumstances. After all, a law had been broken. The police don't make the laws, they just enforce them. Perhaps the level of force used was justified. Garner was a big man and he was not exactly surrendering. The entire episode, however, is still an abomination. The law is absolutely unjustified, and now we see how one of these silly little laws can lead directly to tragedy. Garner is dead because some city councilman thought he would justify his existence with a new ordinance stamping out cigarette peddling.
There is perhaps no greater justification for civil disobedience than to protest unreasonable, capricious laws like this one. The next step is to hold the leaders who pass these laws directly accountable for bringing us one step closer to a police state that we will all fear.
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