Remembering the killing of Eric Garner.
On Tuesday New York’s mayor Eric Adams said he prays that there will never be another “Eric Garner situation” again.
An Eric Garner situation?
Mayor Adams seems to be the master of the euphemism.
Wednesday marks 10 years since Eric Garner was killed by New York City police.
“I can’t breathe” were Garner’s last words.
Bystander video showed Garner gasping the phrase while locked in an illegal police chokehold.
Black Lives Matter protests exploded in New York and across the country.
Only a few weeks later, Michael Brown, an 18-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
It was another of those situations.
Six years later, George Floyd was recorded uttering the exact same words as he begged for air while a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck, sparking a new wave of mass protests.
One more situation.
There would be others
Today, Eric Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, plans to lead a march on Staten Island, the borough where Garner was strangled in the chokehold by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaeo.
Ms. Carr told TV station NY1 that she is still trying to keep her son’s name relevant and fighting for justice.
Although it was determined that Pantaleo had used a chokehold banned by the New York Police Department in the 1990s, and the city medical examiner’s office ruled Garner’s death a homicide, neither state nor federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against Pantaleo or any of the other officers who were present.
Garner’s family settled a lawsuit against New York City for $5.9 million but continued to seek justice in the form of a judicial inquiry into Garner’s death in 2021.
One of the attorneys representing Garner’s family was civil rights lawyer Alvin Bragg, who was then campaigning for Manhattan district attorney, a post he won in November of that year.
Bragg, who successfully prosecuted former President Donald Trump for hush money payments to a porn actor this year, praised Carr and other members of Garner’s family on Tuesday.
I am betting nobody will be mentioning Eric Garner today at the MAGA rally in Milwaukee.