20ric Garner’s wife says her husband had a history of arrests, but she says he wasn’t resisting arrest before a police chokehold led to his death.
Resisting arrest was the premise on which officers say they brought down Garner on a sidewalk in the New York borough of Staten Island.
Esaw Garner told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday her 43-year-old husband was “murdered unjustly.”
A bystander’s video showed Garner saying “I can’t breathe” as officers held him down. Authorities say Garner was being arrested on suspicion of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.
She says she and her children have moved out of their Staten Island neighborhood for fear of what could happen to her sons at the hands of police.
(AP)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
3 Responses
Let me get this straight.
They want us to see on the video that he wasn’t resisting arrest, WHEN HE REALLY WAS!?!?!
One curiosity in all the reporting about Mr. Garner’s death is that many reports refer to the number of times he was arrested (the number is, I think, approximately 40), but no report I have read mentions the number of times he was convicted, and of what crimes or infractions he was convicted. There is a significant difference between arrest and conviction, and if a person was arrested 40 times and convicted only a few times, of minor infractions, I could understand why he might have felt harrassed or persecuted.
He does appear to be resisting arrest in the video clip I have seen, but there is a fine line between arguing with a cop and resisting arrest. But that fine line is irrelevant, as one police officer clearly had his hand across Mr. Garner’s windpipe, which is prohibited by Police Department rules and is an effective way of killing someone, intentionally or accidentally, with or without asthma, heart or vascular disease, obesity and/or diabetes.
The police officer was an animal. If someone says “I can’t breathe”, you let go! Why didn’t he cuff him, why didn’t he take him in? This was murder. He killed an unarmed person.