Posted on 12/21/2014 5:58:23 AM PST by RC one
Much has alrteady been said of the alleged choke hold employed by officer Panatelo against Eric Garner and the resulting turn of events that ultimately ended with Garner's death. I have watched the video dozens of time and would like to offer my own perspective, as an ER nurse, of what happened. I will include two You Tube video links as references.
In video number 1, we observe the initial confrontation between Garner and the police.
At 38 seconds, officer Pantaleo has attempted to subdue Garner and we see his left arm going around Garner's neck. This is the beginning of the alleged choke hold. Pantaleo wrestles the clearly conscious and alert Garner to the ground. 10 seconds later, we see the infamous image of Garner lying on the ground on his right side with Pantaleo restraining Garner in either a choke hold or a rear head lock.
Between 48 seconds and 53 seconds, we see Garner come off his side somewhat as officers attempt to place his hands behind his back to handcuff him. In this same time, Panataleo has released the choke hold/head lock and at 53 seconds we hear Garner say, for the first time, "I can't breathe".
at 55 seconds, Pantaleo has fully released Garner from the head lock/choke hold and is seen placing his hands on the side of Garner's head.
At 56 seconds, garner again states "I can't breathe" while officers attempt to hand cuff him.
At 58 seconds Garner states again "I can't breathe" for the third time.
and again at 59 seconds.
and at 1:00 minute, and again at 1:02 seconds and at 1:04 seconds.
At 1:12 seconds, Garner is done talking and is on the ground surrounded by police officers. It is difficult to see what is happening at this point but we know that Garner was released from the choke hold/head lock 19 seconds ago and was on his side at that time. We know that he started complaining of difficulty breathing at that time. We also know that if he was in an actual choke hold and was unable to breathe from it, he wouldn't have been able to speak. At most he would have been able to squeak or gurgle. Words would not have been possible. He wasn't having trouble breathing because he was being choked by officer Pantaleo.
The preliminary autopsy report concluded that there was no damage to the trachea or neck bones which means his trachea was not collapsed from trauma and he, therefore, wasn't having difficulty breathing from a collapsed or otherwise impaired trachea/airway.
The initial story was that Garner died of a heart attack in the back of the ambulance en route to the hospital. Difficulty breathing is a very common sign of a heart attack.
It therefore seems safe to assume that Garner suffered his fatal heart attack at 53 seconds and ultimately lost consciousness at around 1:12 seconds, 19 seconds later. Loss of consciousness, incidentally, is another very common symptom of a heart attack.
So, Garner had a heart attack and passed out on the sidewalk. At this point, in accordance with American Heart Association guidelines, CPR, rescue breathing, and defibrillation via an automatic external defibrillator while waiting for the EMS to arrive would have been the appropriate response.
This brings us to You Tube video number 2:
It isn't clear how much time has elapsed between the end of the first video and the beginning of the second video so we will assume no time and focus on the events of video number 2. Throughout video #2, what is abundantly clear is that Eric Garner is completely unresponsive and completely unconscious. Notice how Garner requires two officers to keep him from flopping onto his abdomen throughout this video; at 2:23 seconds we have a clear example of what I'm talking about. It's obvious that Garner is limp and lifeless at this point.
Notice at 2:29 seconds the officers calmly talking amongst themselves. As an ER nurse, what is, in my opinion, most obviously lacking throughout this video are the three aforementioned things-chest compressions, rescue breathing, and defibrillation. Instead, we see a very large number of police officers standing around doing nothing while Garner slowly dies of the heart attack he suffered a few minutes ago.
At 2:37 seconds, EMS has arrived on the scene.
At 3:48, Garner is still very much lifeless on the sidewalk and not a single attempt has been made to resuscitate him.
At 4:03 seconds, the EMS takes their initial look at garner.
She spends 10 seconds looking for signs of respirations and obviously sees none.
at 4:13 seconds, she checks for a pulse.
at 4:24 seconds, she stops looking for a pulse.
at 4:28 seconds she checks for responsiveness. Garner is still unresponsive.
At 4:48 seconds, Garner is rolled to his back and the EMS lady continues to assess. Notice at 5:54, the hand on the abdomen assessing for breathing. again.
As of 6:08 seconds, I certainly hevaen't seen any chest movement but the video quality isn't great. I think we can assume, however, given that he is A.) unconscious and B.) that he ultimately died of a heart attack, we can assume that his heart is not beating meaningfully at this point and he isn't spontaneously breathing and is, not adequately perfusing his brain or his heart with oxygenated blood.
At 6:24 seconds, he is loaded onto a stretcher. Notice his right leg which lifelessly falls off the stretcher. He is clearly unconscious and unresponsive at that point. to put it another way, he's dead.
At 6:36 seconds, a bystander finally asks the million dollar question: "Why ain't nobody doing CPR"?
A cop respinds, "he's breathing". Sure he is.
at 7:20 seconds, Garner is carted off down the steet where he is placed into an ambulance. According to the official story, he then suffered a heart attack in the back of the ambulance and died en route to the hospital.
BS.
He had the heart attack approximately 53 seconds into video number 1.
and he died not because of a choke hold by Officer Pantaleo but because a dozen cops stood around for about 7 minutes and declined to render any kind of aid to a man that had just suffered a heart attack.
and finally, let's not forget, it was all over non-compliance with a local tax ordinance. Your government at work.
True, he should not have resisted initially as he clearly did but aid should have been rendered.
So, that's how I see it.
There is NO evidence of an MI, early reports or not. Admit you are not an ER nurse. MI is determined in the field by EKG showing ST elevation and, in the ER, using cardiac enzyme markers like troponins and ckmb. You can’t tell from a video or from “early reports” that someone has a “heart attack”.
The FACT that EMS did not start ACLS means the dude had a pulse and was breathing. You DO NOT start CPR in that case.
An ER nurse would know this.
Nota Particle, RN, BLS, ACLS, PHTLS
You represent stolen honor. You are Not an ER nurse. You don’t even know what a “heart attack” is. Most of my friends, dozens if not hundreds, are ER nurses and EMS. I am an ER nurse. These are terrible jobs that few can do. Stop pretending.
Having had a major heart attack I know that my primary symptom was an inability to fully breathe.
There was no pain
yeah, I’m sitting in an ER right now getting ready to discharge someone you freaking loser. You have zero arguments and are obviously clueless. Get lost.
Garner was overwight, african american, diabetic, and had heart disease and asthma. His heart attack was inevitable. I don't necessarily blame the officers for the supposed choke hold. They didn't know his health history. I just think that they could have done a little more once it was clear that he was unconscious and not breathing. My real issue, however, is that this very well illustrates the decreased police emphasis on protecting and serving the citizens and the increased emphasis on enforcing the will of petty little tyrants like Bill de Blasio who wish to squeeze taxes out of people and interfere with free trade.
You aren’t an ER nurse.
I understand that difficulty breathing is a symptom of myocardial infarction (heart attack). I work in a chest pain center and a cardiac cath center. I deal with MI’s almost every shift
The fat guy who wheezed when talking died because any stress would have killed him. The cops and EMS couldn’t save a dead man. Early responders did their God given responsibil ity.
A Jury says so.
Could you please show me where where the autopsy mentions “heart attack”?
Multiple reports said it was the retail merchants who complained about Garner and rightly so.
That would be an example of the police serving the citizen merchants.
The videos, the best and only real evidence we have, clearly shows that Garner's neck was not being compressed when he was complaining of difficulty breathing. What's more, it shows that he was on his side in the recovery position throughout the video except for a few seconds in the initial struggle to take him down. He was not prone when he was complaining of difficulty breathing.
Only after he was down, on his side, with Pantaleo's hands on the side of his head did we hear the repeated complaints of difficulty breathing. There was no neck compression and he was on his side and he was talking which means, as you have already stated, he was breathing. He clearly stopped breathing a short time after all of that however. and that is the real question, when did he really stop breathing? There on the sidewalk or an hour later in the back of an ambulance on the way to the hospital?
More to the point, the video also shows that Garner was completely unresponsive and limp. What's more, I have watched that video dozens of times and I sure don't see any chest movement to suggest meaningful respirations. His lack of muscle tone, lack of responsiveness, and lack of breathing surely suggests a man in major distress-someone who ought to be receiving CPR for example.
The initial line was that he died of a heart attack in the back of the ambulance an hour later on the way to the hospital. this is what was reported prior to this becoming a national tipping point. I don't know how anyone with any sense at all can watch video number 2 and then believe that he died an hour later in the back of an ambulance.
What I would like to see is all the data from the lifepak that, as rumor has it, Garner was connected to in the back of the ambulance. This would be very useful and it would be illegal to destroy it so I assume it exists. I'm about as likely to see the holy grail as I am to see Eric Garner's lifepak data however.
So you go ahead and defend that autopsy report but I think anyone with eyes and the capacity to think for themselves will want to believe the videos that have been posted at the top of this thread.
Do retail merchants own the sidewalks? Taxes were paid on the initial pack(s) of cigarettes incidentally so the local tax law wasn’t even being broken. Who are these merchants to say that a man doesn’t have a right to freely compete against them unless he does it from inside his own store? This is all very typical of course and it burns my a55. We all talk about free trade and how in favor of it we are but then when we see it actually happening in our country, we call in the enforcers to shut it down. I have been in Garner’s position before. I have had the police confiscate (steal) my legally owned property for selling it in a park. Were I the mayor of any large city, there would be free trade and there would be no shutting it down.
You never know unless you try. and they didn't. But it's good to see you admitting that he was, in fact, dead when the cops were standing around him getting their story straight.
What do you do in the heart cath center btw, answer the phone for the doctors and nurses? No, I'll bet you clean up the messes they leave.
Your question singles out retail merchants.
Do the street vendors own the sidewalk?
Does any individual own the sidewalk?
The answer is that the public owns the sidewalk and sets the rules what can be done on the sidewalk thru their local government.
The merchants are the ones who rent store fronts based on the rules that have been set.
People don't individually own public sidewalks and it's not theirs to do whatever they please.
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