Just days after the Ferguson episode, another wave of protests erupted in New York on Wednesday as yet another US grand jury decided not to indict another white police officer for the death of the unarmed black man, caused apparently by a chokehold as he was being overpowered.
Video footage of the rough encounter that had led to the death of the tall, burly Eric Garner after he was tackled by four police officers in New York’s Staten Island on July 17 has been viewed more than a million times on the Internet.As news came on Wednesday that the Staten Island grand jury had ruled out indictment of police officer Daniel Pantaleo, New Yorkers cried foul and took to the streets. They marched through busy thoroughfares, blocked traffic in some places and staged a “die-in” protest at the Grand Central Terminal.
A New York City medical examiner had ruled Garner’s death a homicide, caused in part by the chokehold used during the arrest. Garner, known to have had frequent brushes with the law and held over 30 times earlier, was also an asthmatic.
Officer Pantaleo said it was never his intention to harm anyone and that he felt “very bad about the death of Garner”. Garner’s widow rejected the officer’s apology.President Barack Obama, distressed by the frequency of such happenings, directed Attorney General Eric Holder to hold a federal civil rights investigation into the Garner death.
Obama spoke of the concern among “too many minority communities that law enforcement is not working with them and dealing with them in a fair way”, adding: “This is an American problem. When anybody in this country is not being treated equally under the law, that’s a problem. And it’s my job as President to help solve it.”