A New York City man who was at most guilty of selling loose cigarettes on the street was tackled and placed in a chokehold by a police officer in late August. The man, Eric Garner, protested that he couldn’t breathe, but the officer with his arm around Garner’s didn’t let up. Today, a grand jury announced that it would not indict the officer, Daniel Pantaleo.
I’ll leave it to the legal analysts to rehash the evidence presented to the Pantaleo grand jury. Hopefully there will be a transparent accounting of what was introduced. But the fact that two grand juries in fairly rapid succession have failed to indict police officers involved in highly questionable deaths of unarmed black men should give us all pause. In Panaleo’s case, the grand jury’s refusal to indict him despite his use of dangerous and violent tactics doesn’t pass the smell test. Add in historic patterns of NYPD abuse against black men in New York—Amadou Diallo, Abner Loiuma, stop and frisk generally—and the lack of an indictment downright stinks.
The failure to indict the officers who killed both Eric Garner and Michael Brown deprives their communities of the transparency and accountability that trials ensure. No one is saying that the officers should be tried if there’s not sufficient evidence, but many legal analysts have agreed there’s enough in both cases to at least warrant a trial. There are questions about facts in terms of both Michael Brown and Eric Garner’s movements before their death, questions of fact that should be debated in a court. There are questions about the officers’ states of mind—questions that could be fleshed out and better understood if the cases went to trial.
But the lack of indictments, now twice in a row, seems to add insult to injury—that not only are black men routinely, disproportionately victimized by the police but they are victimized by a legal system that refuses to hold the police accountable.
First Mike Brown, Then Eric Garner: Prosecutors Can’t Be Trusted to Try Cops (via kenyatta)
“Not only are black men routinely, disproportionately victimized by the police but they are victimized by a legal system that refuses to hold the police accountable.” I want to emphasize that sentence of the piece, because it is not conjecture; it is reporting.
Statistics consistently show a consistent racial bias in the American justice system. Black offenders are more likely to be arrested than white, more likely to be jailed, and on average receive longer prison sentences then white offenders convicted of the same crime. And black men who are not attacking a police officer are far more likely to be killed by police than white men who aren’t attacking a police officer.
There is just no question that systemic racism shapes the American legal system.
Denver Police seize tablet, delete video of brutal arrest. But it had backed up to “the cloud”.
Late in August, Levi Frasier saw a violent scene unfolding on the street before him. So he decided to use his tablet to record it.
As plain-clothed men repeatedly punch a Latino man in the face, they can be heard shouting: “Spit the drugs out! Spit the drugs out!”
In the background, a woman is screaming “stop” in Spanish. Two uniformed officers rush up and help restrain the man — and knock the feet out from beneath the visibly pregnant 25-year-old. She lands on her stomach and face.
Some 55 seconds later, someone shouted “camera”.
A police officer stormed up to the witness, who was white, snatching his device from his hands and threatens him with arrest.
“When he took it, I said, ‘Hey! You can’t do that. You need a warrant for that!’ and he said, ‘What program did you take the video with? Where is that?’” Frasier later told Fox 31 News.
The police officer proceeded to search through his files.
“The first officer that comes up to ask me about my witness statement brings me to the police car and says we could do this the easy way or we could do this the hard way,” Fraser said.
“It was survival mode. It was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to make it out of here. Not going to go to jail today for something I didn’t have anything to do with,’” Frasier said.
When police eventually returned his tablet, the video evidence was gone.
“I couldn’t believe it. My heart dropped,” Frasier said. “I know I just shot that video, like it’s not on there now?”
Frasier had forgot he’d set his tablet to automatically upload files to the “cloud”, external storage services fed by mobile communications devices such as 4G phone and Wi-Fi links.
The FBI has now started an investigation into the case. x
(Source: http://rubyknits.tumblr.com/)
