<p>“That was Paul’s talking point. The police only killed him because of punitive tax policies.”</p>
<p>That is really not it. It is the policy of Broken Window policing. Going after very minor infractions (this one being loosies.)
But it can be anything - for instance, jaywalking or walking down the middle of a street. But only if you are black or brown. </p>
<p>CF - I will have to check back to see where I read that. Maybe it was from some other person in the chain - as I think of it it may have been the officer calling in the shooting. Will check later . . .</p>
<p>Cardinal fang, I’m not sure if this had to do with the fact that Pantaleo is a cop. I think he would have been racist no matter his career. A couple of weeks ago my husband was sent to work on the officer’s side of the island. He mentioned to me that he is in the top tier of seniority in his garage (on Garner’s side) but would be in the bottom on that side. This means he gets good vacation, premium overtime, etc. not insignificant perks. I asked him why the guys over there didn’t transfer over for the perks. He rolled his eyes at me and told me to think about it. I’m not a union worker, so I didn’t get it until he explained that these guys would rather lose the perks than work among black people. Point being, it’s not only cops. </p>
<p>“There was no video in ferguson, but the forensic evidence showed that Michael brown was the aggressor. On Staten Island, there was video which clearly showed that Eric Garner was not dangerous to the officer.”</p>
<p>I have no doubt that if there was no video in the Garner case the same people would are so sure about what happened in Ferguson would be insisting that the evidence presented to the Grand Jury in Staten Island must have supported the officer’s story and would have agreed with the no bill returned by the Grand Jury. </p>
<p>Whose word do we have that the dispatcher didn’t tell the cops about the caller’s belief that the gun was a toy? The dispatcher, or the cop? At this point, I wouldn’t believe a cop who just killed someone if he told me it was raining.</p>
<p>Moreover, Officer Trigger-Happy should have realized that in an empty park, there was no need to scream at the person and shoot to kill one second after he got out of the car (literally, one second, he shot pretty much as he was getting out of the car ) – because it might have been a child with a toy gun. And he’d be murdering a kid with a toy gun. But black lives don’t matter, so he shot first and asked questions later. </p>
<p>I was thinking about the cops screaming at that kid from their squad car, as they have said they did. When my son was 12-- heck, probably even now-- he wouldn’t respond to a scream by immediately complying. He’d be startled and confused. He’d freeze, or do something random, while he tried to process the screaming. Fortunately for the people who love him, my son is white, but mothers of black boys love their sons too.</p>
<p>That’s what I recalled too, marie: that Officer Trigger-Happy guessed the child was 20 after he killed him, whereas the 911 caller clearly said that the person in the park was a child.</p>
<p>So its being reported that the officer’s supervisor was there during the Eric Garner murder. Really?? So this choke hold is against dept regulation, yet you felt comfortable enough to use it in front of your superior? That tells me they do whatever the hell they want to do. Also, the officer was allowed to testify to the grand jury. Whats with officers being allowed to testify for the grand jury, that simply is not how it normally operates. </p>
<p>Honestly, there are so many cops in Staten Island, everyone on the jury probably has a family member and /or relative in law enforcement. There was no way he was going to be indicted. I truly hope the Feds charge him.</p>
<p>Partyof5, there is some truth to what you say. There is a morbid joke here that traffic agents have to work much harder here to make their ticket quotas because every third person has a PBA card and can’t be ticketed. It is, unfortunately, pretty accurate and goes a long way to explaining g the extreme number if DUIs.</p>
<p>What! If a mildly sarcastic reply did not work, here we go. If you want people to understand what you implied as opposed to what you wrote, start writing more clearly or stop quoting parts of posts you are not really answering to. </p>
<p>This is what YOU wrote in response to my original sentence which you quoted: </p>
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<p>Are you really trying to convince yourself that your statement about “when the evidence is overwhelming” was not in answer to my own lines about the parallels? If you were talking about other cases or making a general statement, you should have made your statement WITHOUT quoting my words. I wrote specifically about the TWO cases and it is fair to believe that your reply was about those same two cases. Sheesh! </p>
<p>Now, go read your own words a couple of times! :(</p>
<p>Emily, if it makes you feel comforted to spin and twist, go for it.</p>
<p>Sometimes I think there are people who don’t ever want healing or understanding or peace or working together, they seem to derive something that they need from feeling themselves apart from and better than others. </p>
<p>Regarding the Tamir Rice, I dont know how I can take another cop getting off. It appears the cop basically got out of the car shooting, that poor child didnt have a chance to say or do anything. </p>
<p>Even though the cops were not told about the child/toy part, nevertheless, there are children in the world and that person sitting on a swing in a park that the cop is about to kill might be one. But the bigger point is, often Shoot to Kill seems to be the only tool the cops think about pulling out of their toolbox.</p>
<p>There was a recent study about how black children are perceived to be much older than they actually are, which carried huge negative consequences. Who saw that?</p>