"No reasonable cause"?!
There's video of it, where Eric Garner is arguing about what's happening to him but being non-violent about it, still getting caught in the cop's chokehold and begging for life gasping "I... Can't... Breathe..."
The official coroner's report came back as a homicide.
What part of "Illegal choke hold" is getting overlooked here?
That old "joke" that a grand jury - basically a tool of prosecutors to sort out the evidence useful to bring charges on a suspect - would indict a ham sandwich? That's two grand juries in a row refusing to bring a white cop to trial for killing a black man.
That's two different prosecuting attorneys - both of whom deserve to get disbarred for their bias or ineptitude, take your pick - who basically controlled grand juries into doing nothing.
That's two groups of fellow Americans either buying into the "Blue Wall" excuse granting cops full immunity to kill all in their path, or else refusing to see the injustice of not bringing killers to any accounting for the lives they've taken. Lives that happened to be black men. Lives taken by those who happen to be white.
Anybody who claims we don't lynch blacks in this country anymore ought to take a look at the body count the last 5 years.
I've said this before: Our cops are not supposed to be executioners. Our cops are supposed to follow an oath to Protect And Serve. It's their job to bring the suspects to trial and have the juries and judges determine the guilt. It is not the jobs of cops to execute with lethal force. Our cops do NOT have a license to kill.
There are so many legal and effective means to arrest anybody without resorting to pulling out a gun or a taser or a baton or the use of a lethal hold. GOOD cops do that every day of the year, and we don't hear about those arrests.
What does it tell you that we're hearing and witnessing more and more BAD cops on a weekly, now daily basis, beating the crap out of people, smashing in car windows, blowing up baby cribs, and outright shooting 12-year-olds the second they arrive on scene? We have one cop shooting a teenager even after other cops - GOOD cops - had stabilized the confrontation, saying "We don't have time for this." We have cops shooting a guy holding a BB gun in a Wal-Mart, all because some jackass claimed the guy was threatening people with it (in-store video proved he wasn't). In the only good news out of all this police misconduct, there was a recent incident where the cops arrested and pepper sprayed a black foster child in his own home. If you can call that good news.
And now our cops are out in the streets blockading the marches and protests, now in New York City as the outrage over Garner's death takes over the city, much like Brown's death took over Ferguson.
We've got prosecutors who won't hold anybody accountable for death after death after death, after maiming after wounding after false arrest after false reports after lie after lie after more lies. We've got police departments arming themselves with firepower that matches our army, rolling heavy through our own communities as they escalate the violence trying to impose order in response to the injustice they're refusing to recognize in their own actions.
Don't be surprised if our nation's faith - not just Black folks who'd figured out a while back that their lives don't matter, but Whites who genuinely want this nation to work for ALL its citizens - in the very concept of JUSTICE is dying in the streets just like our own citizens.
What the hell is wrong with America tonight? We're living under a cloud of fear, living with a legal system skewing more against its own people.
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