I may have mixed feelings about Ferguson, Ray Rice, and the UVA rape case, but God almighty, that’s not a problem with the killing of Eric Garner, is it? We have a trivial offense, a minuscule level of “resisting arrest,” a banned chokehold, five cops around, no life-threatening situation by any stretch of the imagination, and yet—one dead guy, who spent the last minute of his existence pleading for his life. But despite all that, along with a medical examiner’s judgment of homicide by chokehold, there’s no indictment of the police officer responsible.
This is not like Ferguson. Regardless of how you feel personally about what happened there, I think there was virtually no chance that officer Darren Wilson would ever have been convicted in the death of Michael Brown. The evidence was just too inconsistent and the standard for guilt too high. That makes it at least arguable that the grand jury did the right thing when it failed to indict.
Nothing like that can be said here. Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who applied the chokehold to Garner, might have won a trial, but he might have lost it too. That being the case, there’s little excuse for not letting a jury do its job and make a finding of fact in this case. Instead, Garner’s death was treated as little more than an annoyance to be swept away. If we needed any evidence that police officers can pretty much kill anyone they want with impunity, this is it.
