People will say Ferguson and Staten Island cases are identical, they
obviously have some very obvious similarities but there is one big
difference. In Ferguson it's a he said/ she said case where in Staten
Island it's not at all vague, there is a video tape. Nobody will
ever know whether Mike Brown approached the cop car or tried to take
his gun and nobody will ever know exactly what the confrontation was
like but in the case of Eric Garner there is no ambiguity.
Forget whether Pantaleo is guilty, the fact of the matter is that a
man is dead after being arrested for a low level crime. I get that he
could have been more cooperative but you'd have to say that the cop
could also have been a bit more cooperative or at least a bit less
forceful. At some point it seems that subduing Garner was
accomplished, the dude looks like he is going to topple like a felled
tree I'd have to think that this is textbook case for indictment of
criminal negligent homicide. I'm not ready to send Pantaleo to
Rikers without due process but the fact that he won't even see a day
in court is mystifying.
Grand juries are bullshit. They are being used now as political cover by pussy prosecutors who really don't want to prosecute.
ReplyDeleteTime to eliminate them. A lot of states don't even have them.