It’s the second Eric Garner video that made me cry.
Not the one where Officer Daniel Pantaleo chokes Garner for 15 seconds before smashing his head into the sidewalk for 10 seconds as other cops hold down and cuff Garner, ignoring the pleas he issued with the last air in his lungs:
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“I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”
It’s the video shot minutes later as Garner lies dying among men and women in uniforms, men and women who seemed not to give half a damn, that broke me down. Here’s the scene:
OPEN: Shaky camera, recording from just inside a store door and looking.
Large and African-American, Garner is facedown on the concrete and apparently unconscious. A couple of cops have their hands on him, as if trying to move or steady him. Others (none of whom appear to be black)chat in a loose semicircle, occasionally barking at the crowd off-camera. Among them, to the camera’s right, is Pantaleo.
VOICE OFF-CAMERA: “He didn’t do nothing. He was breaking up a fight.”
VOICE OFF-CAMERA: “Where’s the ambulance?”
COP CHORUS: “Back up. Back up. C’mon, let’s go. Back up.”
Garner coughs loudly. He is still unresponsive. Cops roll him off his stomach and onto his side.
COP: “Sir, can you step back please? We’re trying to give him some air.”
COP: “Let’s go. Back up.”
They issue the commands even though no one is obstructing them, nor are any of the cops doing anything to assist Garner.
PASSING CAR, PUMPING NICKI MINAJ: “Pills and potions / We’re overdosing / I’m angry but I still love you.”
COP TO GARNER: “Sir, EMS is here. Answer their questions, OK?”
VOICE: “He can’t breathe!”
EMT Nicole Palmeri checks Garner’s pulse but does nothing else.
PALMERI: “Sir. It’s EMS. C’mon. We’re here to help, all right. We’re here to help you. We’re getting the stretcher. All right?”
GARNER: Silence.
Palmeri walks off.
A bit later, the cops and medics finally decide to get Garner into an ambulance.
COP: “We’re going to try to get him up on the stretcher. It’s going to take like six of us.”
They hoist him up and literally drop him onto a gurney. Or at least the left side of him. One cop catches his legs falling off.
Another holds Garner’s shirt, apparently to keep the rest of him from rolling off the gurney. Garner’s belly is exposed. He appears to be unconscious.
VOICE: “Why nobody do no CPR?”
VOICE: “Nobody did nothing.”
COP (as he walks by): “Because he’s breathing.”
The camera turns to Pantaleo, about 20 feet away. He waves and steps out of the picture. The camera shifts back to Garner strapped to the gurney and being wheeled away.
The cops walk off behind him. A few people walk out of a store, back to the street.
(END SCENE)
Garner had a heart attack in the ambulance, and died.
As he lay dying, he was treated like a piece of meat. By Pantaleo. By the other cops on the scene. Even by the medical technicians.
Had Garner been treated with basic human dignity after he was violently, and needlessly, taken down, he might not be dead.
I’m no lawyer, but this is section 125.15 of New York’s penal code: “A person is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree when: 1. He recklessly causes the death of another person.”
So I’m stunned, and saddened, by a Staten Island grand jury’s decision to level no charges against Pantaleo.
Anyone unsure why so many people of color are upset with the police, and suspicious of the American justice system, put your politics down, open your eyes and watch the videos.
There’s more to be said on another day about broken-windows policing. Garner was known to cops for selling loose cigarettes, though he wasn’t doing that when he was arrested and killed.
There is more to be said another day about the dishonesty or intellectual confusion of those activists, protesters and politicians who appear to view cops as the only real criminals.
But fear of police and lost faith in justice are real, corrosive forces. That fear makes decent people of color feel that society places a lower value on their lives. It makes parents and their children fear the very people who are supposed to be protecting them. Good policing demands community buy-in, so perception itself matters.
And that fear is not only in people’s minds. Just open your eyes and watch the videos.
