The death of Erick Garner, a 43-year-old 350-pound black man in Staten Island was one crisis that happened to Bill de Blasio’s mayoralty in 2014. Even though Erick Garner was diagnosed with heart problems and diabetes, his death was reported to result from the police brutality; the police officers subdued him to the ground with an attempt to arrest him for suspicion of selling cigarettes which were untaxed in Staten Island. The police officers who killed Garner were sent on a mission to clear an area, believed to be an unlawful activity scene as the local merchants complained.
The death of Garner may have evoked emotions of the lethal case that has happened in the last two decades, involving New York Police Department (NYPD). Even though Garners case was a serious one, it could not compare to lethal lawsuits such as the death of Amadou Diallo in 1999, an immigrant who was shot and killed by four police officers in the Bronx, who mistaken him to have a gun. Similarly, it could neither compare to the death of Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant sodomized using a broomstick in 1997 by Officer Justin Volpe in Brooklyn’s bathroom; nor compared to a 29-year-old Anthony Beaz’s demise in 1994. A who was subjected to death using a chokehold, by Officer Francis Livoti while playing street football in the Bronx.
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Later, it could not be determined whether Garner died as a result of the chokehold, as the autopsy results announced by a medical examiner spokeswoman, Julie Bolcer, indicated that Garner’s cause and manner of death had no clear determination. This came despite the video showing Pantaleo, the police officer who killed Garner, throwing his arm around the neck of Garner while Garner was shouting his difficulty to breath. Pantaleo throwing his arm around Garner’s neck was not necessarily a chokehold, but even if Garner broke the law or not, and resisted the arrest, he was not a threat to the police or anybody. Therefore, this could not justify his death because the cops who wrestled him to the ground did not seem to be fighting for their lives.
Unfortunately, two distinct narratives came out as the case has always been with many African Americans and the NYPD. The first description of the police was that the police officers were responding to the longtime directive initiated in the 1990s by Bratton to eradicate minor crimes with an aim to prevent significant crimes from happening, while the second narrative was that the death of Garner was a result of racism and police brutality. Mayor De Blasio, who was against the controversial policy of stop-and –risk by NYPD, found himself in a difficult situation in trying to solve the matter of police brutality and excessive use of force because he could not go too far against the cops for fear of losing them. As a result, Pantaleo, the police officer responsible for Garner’s death, was positioned on a modified assignment.
The death of Garner was a sign of a massive challenge faced by Commissioner Bill Bratton as he tried to train most considerable police force of America to practice how to actively listen to people and addressing the needs of those who request for help. The underlying question was whether Bratton and De Blasio would manage to change the deep-rooted attitude of the police. Most of the citizens were already angry with the police program of a stop, question, and frisk, initiated by Michael Bloomberg who was a former mayor. Thus, Bratton and De Blasio wanted to neutralize the fury with a program that was much-publicized that would encourage respect and dignity treatment of the citizens by the police. The training was meant to build enough trust for the NYPD to enhance its enforcement of offences deemed to be minor and of quality-of-life.
The primary goal of this program was to improve the work of the police, enhance relations of a community as well as reducing crime rates to the lowest. But the case of Garner proved that the old attitudes of the police were still running deep into them. The video of Garner’s death that went viral showed that the police officers used a chokehold to subdue Garner, some cops waving at the camera watching Garner was dying on the ground, and even after the ambulance came, they were not so fast to respond to aid Garner’s breathing. Therefore, Bratton faces a big task to achieve this initiative.
The probe of Garner’s death continued, and the results soon came out. The result indicated that Garner death appeared to have resulted from cardiac arrest after he got into a wrestle the police who tried to arrest him on the sidewalk for a minor infraction of selling untaxed cigarettes in Staten Island. Garner was laid to rest on 24th July 2014 at Brooklyn Bethel Baptist church in Boerum Hill as stipulated by Attorney Sanford Rubenstein, Garner’s family lawyer. Pantaleo was undressed of his gun and badge and was located a desk duty while the investigation was still underway, and another officer took on a modified assignment as well as the other four emergency medical officers from Richmond University Medical center.
According to the court records, Pantaleo who was the police officer at the center of Garner’s death was found to have been embroiled in other civil rights lawsuits before. One was a federal lawsuit in January 2012 involving Pantaleo settled for 30,000 dollars. Pantaleo accused by two Staten Island men of stopping their vehicle unlawfully, frisking them and ordering strip searching which was humiliating in public, as revealed by court records. The two men by the name Tommy Rice, 42 and a 45-year-old Darren Collins said that they were compelled by Pantaleo to pull their underwear and pants down. Additionally, in February 2012, Rylawn Walker filed a one million dollar lawsuit against Pantaleo and another police officer in Manhattan, as court records disclosed. Walker accused the two of arresting him for offences related to marijuana but asserted that he was not doing any crime. The case was still pending as reported by Staten Island Advance.
According to Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), other chokehold cases reviewed internally by the NYPD mainly resulted from a slap on the wrist. Out of the ten confirmed chokehold incidences from the year 2009 to 2014, one resulted in the officer losing not less than ten vacation days while three resulted in sentencing the officer to restrain, according to the data of CCRB. The NYPD refused attempt internally two of the cases, in pending are three cases, while in the last case no ruling was made because either the officer retired or resigned before the verdict.
With an attempt to avoid more horrors of excessive police use of force, Commissioner Bill Bratton ordered a use of force retraining for the 35,000 police officers in the NYPD. The retraining was a noble idea, but its success depended on the quality of the program as well as the dedication of NYPD to make the training stick. Bratton hoped that the training to focus on ways of diffusing tension in scary situations such as takedown. The aim should always be to arrest the suspects without rocketing dangers and tempers. As experts put it, waiting out a violent suspect is better than wrestling the subject through forcing a fight. Experts added that it is imperative to make sure that suspects, as well as the bystanders, understand precisely why the police are executing an arrest.
Commissioner Bratton concludes by saying that by NYPD handling force in a better manner, it would stand in a strong position to defend itself against quality-of-life crimes. Besides, he doesn’t believe in tolerance of petty crimes as they trigger criminal behavior, but he did not support the excessive use of force to arrest an unarmed man like Garner.
