NEW YORK COPS MURDER UNARMED, UNRESISTING FATHER OF SIX – YOU BE THE WITNESS AND YOU BE THE JUDGE – Do You See This Man Resisting Arrest?

NEW YORK COPS MURDER UNARMED, UNRESISTING FATHER OF SIX
YOU BE THE WITNESS AND YOU BE THE JUDGE
Do You See This Man Resisting Arrest?

© PJ HAYWARD, 2014 New York

On Friday July 18, 2014 an UNARMED Eric Garner, a married father of six children, was murdered by Staten Island Police, who put the NON-RESISTING, asthmatic Mr. Garner in an illegal chokehold and suffocated him.

Mr. Garner’s crime? He broke up a fight between two friends who fled the scene before the officers arrived.

Eric Garner was unarmed, possessed no drugs, no alcohol and no stolen property. Because of previous arrests for the unlawful sale of CIGARETTES (not drugs, not stolen property – cigarettes) Staten Island police had been harassing him continually – the final time being caught on a friend’s cell phone video which I am posting below. You can clearly see that Mr. Garner has his hands in the air, he is not resisting the officers and in fact is begging them to please stop harassing him and leave him alone – until he is forced to start begging them for his life – he cannot breathe.  They continue to choke and brutalize him even as he lay dying before their sadistic eyes.

This is just one more case of innocent citizens being murdered by those very people who are sworn to “Protect and Serve”.

Previously posted on LawdyMissClawdy – Life Speaks is EXPLORING THE MINDSET BEHIND NEW YORK CITY’S STOP AND FRISK LAWS. Bill De Blasio, our recently elected Mayor has, unfortunately, done a total about face on his promise to suspend the prevailing racially motivated Stop and Frisk Laws. He has gone even further backward by re-appointing one of New York’s most reviled former Police Commissioners, Bill Bratton. We will see what stance they take now that another horrific, unnecessary tragedy has befallen an innocent black man, profiled because of the color of his skin.

You Be The Judge, what did Eric Garner do wrong? Was it a crime for him to beg for his life?

Following this video I am re-posting our article on the outrageous, unfair and often murderous New York City Stop and Frisk policies. Please read it and think it over carefully. Clearly the statistics do not bear out the need for the ruthless tactics employed by our Police Force.  WE MUST LOBBY OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS TO PUT A STOP TO THIS MINDLESS, SENSELESS AND ILLEGAL USE OF BRUTAL FORCE BY OUR POLICE OFFICERS!!

CLICK ON THE LINK DIRECTLY BELOW TO ACCESS THE VIDEO:

 

And now, previously posted last year, our post:

EXLORING THE MIND SET BEHIND NEW YORK CITY’S STOP AND FRISK LAW
© PJ Hayward, New York 2013

In 1973 Huey Newton coined the phrase “Revolutionary Suicide” in his book of the same name.

Here I will not discuss the book, but I do want to talk about the term Revolutionary Suicide and what it stands for, because it’s still so valid today

What brother Huey referred to with the term Revolutionary Suicide is basically an attitude, a concept.  He was speaking about the consequences of conditions in this country – not just on people of color generally – but specifically the Black Man.

Suicide in the broader term, or what Huey called “Reactionary Suicide”, is caused when conditions have become so excruciatingly unbearable for a person that they just give up all hope and feel death is the only way out.

Conversely, Revolutionary Suicide is actually an attitude of survival – because you have such a strong Will to live as a Human Being that to live any other way is impossible.  In his case, as was the case with many other young people in those days,  Huey Newton felt that he would rather risk death by fighting those forces at play that kept him chained and shackled by means of Control, than to live a life under the thumb and the restrictions being put upon non white people at that time and of course, he did ultimately give his life in his pursuit of equal rights.

That was his viewpoint when he, along with Bobby Seale, founded the Black Panther Party: that life without dignity was not life.  If dignity and equal treatment could not be the Right of people as fellow Human Beings, then fighting for that Dignity was worth dying for.  Revolutionary Suicide.

Today, those old time revolutionaries are looked upon as icons from the past.

I myself used to feel that the Revolution actually came – but not in the way we as young people envisioned it would be.  When I grew old I came to believe that the Revolution had snuck in the back door of the establishment and eased it self up into the ranks of the Corporate World, Society and other places where “certain people” were never before welcome.

By that I mean that people of color have proven over and over and over again their ability to take the tiniest grain of hope and turn it into multitudes of bushels of progress.  There is virtually no field of study, no occupation, no school of thinking where people of color have not excelled in every way.  Yet, they are still targets and suspects for any and every negativity imaginable.

But now that I have grown even more old, I believe that I was wrong.  I believe now that the Silent Revolution I once believed had snuck in through a crack in the door or a hole in the wall, is still only trying to find that place to sneak in.

One of the things that blatantly illustrates this is the subject of this post – the Stop and Frisk Law that is being tested and thrown around in New York right now, and the preponderance of people who actually seem to believe it has a place in society today as it is being used – or rather – abused.

The Stop and Frisk Law which goes hand in hand with rampant racial profiling, has been a staple in the New York City police arsenal of tools for decades.  Basically any police officer can stop any citizen – seemingly for no apparent reason other than the color of their skin – and frisk them for weapons.

Astonishingly, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended this practice by actually saying “black and Latino New Yorkers are not stopped and frisked enough, while whites are stopped too much, when compared to the racial breakdown of crime suspects.”

It seems to me that the key word there is “suspects”.  There is a big difference between being a suspect and being a convicted offender.

What no one talks about but I am convinced is one of the real underlying keys to this practice, is police Arrest Quotas.  I doubt that anyone will admit there is such a thing but that will have to be a subject for a future post.

Sticking to the subject of Stop and Frisk – what made this issue even more visible lately were the incidents that happened recently here in New York at the Barney’s store and Macy’s, where several young people of color went into those establishments and purchased very expensive items.  Either before they left the store or shortly thereafter they were stopped and questioned and in at least one case, one of these young people was told “you cant afford that”, although obviously he could because he paid for it.

This is not a one or even two person incident – but a number of people have recently come forward with tales of being profiled by these two particular stores.

For any of you who may not be aware of this, Jay-Z is planning to launch an upscale clothing line in Barney’s at Christmas.  He has taken the position that he wants to reserve judgment on this situation till all the information is available.  So I won’t comment on Jay-Z here.

But Rev. Al (Sharpton) has threatened to boycott Barney’s over these incidents.

The broader obvious question is, if we have only just heard about these particular stores because the purchases were high ticket items, how many thousands of cases are we never going to hear about when the average guy is just shopping at the corner store or walking down the street and is stopped and questioned?

How many of our young sons have come home and told us the harrowing tales of their frightening experiences out on the street, just because they happened to be there on the street?

In my own life I and all the other mothers I know have always cautioned our young people to be respectful to the Law, because no matter what – they have the Power and they have the Weapon.  And how many of those young people are no longer here?  Many.

Here in New York Judge Shira Shiendlin ruled that the Stop and Frisk law was unconstitutional.  Judge Schieindlin quoted the following known statistics:

Between January 2004 and June 2012, the NYPD conducted over 4.4 million stops.

4.4 MILLION

Of those 4.4 MILLION stops the following percentages applied:

52% were black
31% were Hispanic
10% were white

In 2010, New York City’s resident population was roughly;

23% Black
29% Hispanic
33% White.

Weapons were seized in:

1.0% of the stops of Blacks
1.1% of the stops of Hispanics
1.4% of the stops of Whites.

Between 2004 and 2009, the percentage of stops where the officer failed to state a specific suspected crime ROSE FROM 1% to 36%.

Now On Appeal,  another judge has overturned Judge Shiendlin’s ruling, putting a freeze on it and ordering Judge Shiendlin removed from the case.

So Stop and Frisk will continue to be the norm in New York City where the above statistics prove its futility.

When is enough enough?

SCROLL ALL THE WAY DOWN TO THE “COMMENTS” SECTION TO SHARE YOUR OPINION
Your comment will post even without your email address if you wish to remain anonymous

We will reply to all comments, and other readers often leave comments also, so check back every now and then for the latest!  :  )