Posted on 12/03/2014 8:58:20 PM PST by TigerClaws
Charles Krauthammer said Wednesday on "Special Report with Bret Baier" that a grand jury's decision not to indict a New York City police officer in the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who died in July after the officer placed him in a chokehold, is "totally incomprehensible."
"It looks like they at least might have indicted him on something like involuntary manslaughter at the very least," Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor, said. "The guy was unarmed, and the crime was petty as they come. He was selling loose cigarettes, which in and of itself is almost absurd that somebody has to die over that."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I don’t agree with the diminished physical attribute requirement for this reason.
I also don’t agree with lowered physical capability standards.
They were there for a reason.
I’m not sure we want 325 pound 6’ 3” inch officers, but I get your point and I have sympathy for it.
I’m going to say that this guy could have been a fairly big problem for just about anyone.
No physical altercation is without risk. A finger can go in an eye, other things can happen. The officers should not have to deal with guys like this, but they do.
If it gets to the point where they have to take a guy like this down, in some instances some bad things are going to happen, no matter how careful you are.
Your foot can go out from under you when you don’t expect it, your head can hit the pavement, and an officer may not implement a hold properly.
I’ve never been in a physical altercation where things turned out exactly like I wanted. Even when prevailing, there’s a lot less satisfaction then you expect knowing you hurt someone else.
While we sit here at our keyboards and discuss this, officers across the nation are taking part in altercations on a moment’s notice, any one of which can be the end of their career.
They can lose the sight in an eye. They can have a leg bent backwards. They can have a severe arm, wrist, or hand injury. They can have a head injury. They can get shot with their own weapon. They may die.
If I see officers losing their tempers, and causing harm, I am a lot more inclined to assess evil intent. If I see them matter of factly taking a guy down, even what may appear to be violently, I’m not going to be as likely to assess evil. This was a normal take-down. These guy were not trying to hurt the man.
That officer standing right in front of him was talking to him. For a period of time.
When your weight hits the range this guy was in, physical altercations are a real risk. Sadly, he went for it.
Whether you or I agree with the law, the time to challenge it isn’t after you’ve broken it.
Get members of your community to join you in your effort to get things overturned. Protest. Go to city council meetings. Write letters.
Don’t break the law and them blame the laws on an entity that has no power to change them.
Law Enforcement Officers are just that.
I just wrote this to someone else, and said pretty much the same thing to someone else, a little differently.
At any rate, here:
Whether you or I agree with the law, the time to challenge it isn’t after you’ve broken it.
Get members of your community to join you in your effort to get things overturned. Protest. Go to city council meetings. Write letters.
Don’t break the law and them blame the laws on an entity that has no power to change them.
Law Enforcement Officers are just that.
To be honest, that’s what happened here.
Some of these guys were pretty stocky, and he was taken down rather quickly. They weren’t 6’ 8” guys. Still...
None the less, when you’re dealing with a guy that big, you never know what will happen.
“I took a look at the demeanor of the men taking that suspect down. None of them were cursing him, yelling racial epitaphs or striking him violently.
I do not see those guys as trying to be mean to him. Perhaps you see something I don’t.”
No, I don’t think there was malice involved here, or that anyone intended for the situation to end the way it did. I just think that some of the officers didn’t follow their training when they used some of these banned maneuvers. Perhaps they resorted to them because he was so large, but I don’t think that excuses the lapse.
These things (chokeholds, compressing the chest) were banned specifically because they were potentially lethal, and it looks like they were indeed lethal here, or at least contributed greatly. I think if the policy had been followed, this man would still be alive today.
If anything, it’s unfortunate that the grievance mongers are latching on to this case. It might have hardened the resolve of the city and police to circle the wagons and defend their conduct instead of trying to make sure these same mistakes don’t just happen again. We also shouldn’t forget, while we are opposing the grievance mongers and their racially divisive agenda, that there are legitimate cases police of misconduct and abuse that conservatives aught to be concerned about.
Sargon, I’ve made a number of posts on this thread in the last 45 minutes or so.
Read some of them starting here and see if you can find agreement or a remaining conflict.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3233549/posts?page=436#436
Well, it’s undeniable there is a movement out there networking for destruction. We could liken it to a number of off-color things, sadly.
I think another poster had it right. The cops could have easily just ticketed him and been on their way. If he refused to show in court then justice can escalate. That said, I think the notion that government is so intrusive that selling a cigarette is a crime worth physical altercation with the government is just tyranny.
My rule of thumb on things like this, is how many people are you reading about being killed by the actions that brought this guy down?
The NYPD probably deals with people just like this guy day in and day out. If these tactics were as bad as they appear to be here (and of course extrapolated out to be even worse over a broad body of people), this would be a scandal of epic proportions. It really isn’t.
Others are brought down with these tactics all the time. So this leads me to think this guy had physical problems that caused him to be high risk.
Some folks will come along and think I’m trying to give the police license to do anything they want. The truth is, I think they have a hard job and it’s tough to do that job with 10,000 experts attacking every incident based on spotty information that seems to indicate one thing happened when it may or may not have.
I agree that the police to have to answer for their actions. One of my focuses is no-knock swat raids for little or no cause.
This action, I’m not as bothered by. I am sorry the guy died. I just don’t see gross negligence here.
I do agree that a review is in order. When someone dies it’s good to review things and see if some tweaking in necessary.
There are bad people in every segment of our society. There are bad physicians, bad dentists, bad lawyers, bad judges..., and even bad police officers.
I don’t have a vested interest in defending bad cops. I just have a higher bar than some other folks do, when it comes to assessing actionable blame.
Others will have to verify this, but I believe a citation must be signed. A parking ticket doesn’t, but if you’re pulled over or sited on the street, I believe you have to sign the promise to appear.
If you refuse to sign the promise to appear, you’ll be taken into custody. That’s the only way they can be sure you will appear, if you refuse to simply say you will with a signature.
This guy was mildly combative. He was swatting the officer’s hand away. I’m thinking that this may have happened after he refused to cooperate by signing a citation. Or perhaps this was the XXth time and he was required to be taken into custody.
We can agree or disagree regarding this type of activity, what the laws should be. The thing is, the officers don’t make the rules or decide which laws they will or won’t enforce.
If they observe an infraction, they are required to take action. First timers may be simply warned at an officer’s discretion. Once the guy has been in trouble before a number of times, he’s already made it clear he won’t abide by the law, and the officers will definitely take action.
This escalated because the guy had priors. He had refused to comply. He got combative. He resisted arrest.
There is a debate about how out of line the officers became. I don’t think there is a legitimate beef with the officers merely enforcing the law.
If people don’t like those laws, they need to contact their local officials and network to get the laws changed.
Officers shouldn’t be blamed for doing their job.
Right now officers across the nation refuse to enforce our immigration laws. That’s not working out very good for us. I don’t want officers picking and choosing which laws they will or won’t enforce.
But it wasn’t selling a cigarette that touched this thing off. It was the fact that he had been cited eight times previously and then resisted arrest on the ninth time. If it were his first time, then yeah, cite him and move on. But at some point things have to escalate. There has to be a line somewhere. The cops drew the line at the ninth time and opted to arrest him. He resisted, and their somewhat bungled use of force plus his health problems did him in. It’s a tragic result but he’s no martyr for some higher principle here.
Sheeple getting laws changed to suit them ?
DoughtyOne, it’s going to be very difficult for you to deal with, but it would be better that you research and learn some of the truth about American power behind the scenes than to not be aware of such.
To begin with, those at the top of the illegal drug business are also the people who are the real power behind the scenes of the governments of nations.
So the power behind the scenes is the real ruler of the American sheeple, and these rulers rule through what is essentially a vassal government. The rulers can continue to rule because few believe they exist, so their rule is never seriously challenged. They are hidden in plain sight.
The vassal government is set up like a show with two opposing sides for sheeple to choose to support. But the whole thing is an illusion of self-rule, since corrupted politicians are always privately following the dictates of the ruling elites, even while they preserve the illusion of “opposing” the other “team”.
The sheeple are free to create all the movements they want to effect changes in the law, but the elites already dominate this field of “movements” from the top down and through laws regarding taxes, politics, etc., as well as providing endowments and funding to the their movements/organizations, which are far and away the most powerful, as they mobilize whole sectors of thought leaders in society. For example: the green energy “movement”.
Any sheeple-founded movement or organization will find itself permeated by minions of the ruling elites long before it has any significant political sway. The people closest to the leadership of the sheeple movement, its best helpers, will be gathering intelligence on it and controlling it.
To understand the real power in America, one has to dig and search for history that is eliminated from public and private school cirriculum. The elimination is due to one key reason why the elites chose to quietly control the process of education from the top town centuries ago - so they could eliminate the influence of elites when the sheeple are taught history.
Here is a little starter help, you can search the web for more; note the intermingling of international legitimate and criminal endeavor, by those who by all appearances are “pillars of society”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Russell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jardine,_Matheson_%26_Co.
You have to use those two links merely as a starting point, and expand out into the dealings, families and relationships of those firms/individuals, and follow them forward in history until the present day.
If you really do this research, you’ll be surprised.
I can spoon feed you more, to a point, if you continue to research for yourself. Of course, certain things I can not / will not post, as they are too inflammatory.
Before you embark on such research, you should prepare yourself for a complete letdown in your image of American/UK/European political and business leaders, and the version of history that we the sheeple have all been taught to believe in.
Just a friendly offer.
Precisely!!!
Nice series of posts, DoughtyOne. Well said.
Apparently I do owe you an apology. I can find no evidence you wrote it. The comment seems to have been deleted. Since I can’t prove who said it, you have my apologies.
Interesting viewpoint. The authorities are always right because God put them in authority.
Guess folks shouldn’t have rebelled against the Nazis.
Guess folks shouldn’t have fought against slavery.
Guess we should all just sit back and do what the government tells us to do.
Next time Obama tells you what to do, remember that it is God telling you what to do.
In Ferguson, the activists asked that the National Guard ‘NOT’ interfere when the Grand Jury decision came in.....they insisted they could control the behavior of the mob and doing otherwise would only antagonize them further.
We clearly see how that played out as they torched their own community....and then fiercely complained the National Guard wasn't doing their job.
You can't have it both ways.....
As for Obama....same...like it or not the guy won the election...he's doing just what he said he would do. We have elected representatives to oppose him...if they don't then we unelect them. We do not have that choice regarding police officers. So your comparison is mute.
What you’re trying to teach me, is something I don’t deny. To what extent it is true, none of us truly knows. It’s there. We know it’s there. It is something we have to deal with.
As it applies to this incident, it’s essentially meaningless to me.
When it gets to the street, we have two choice. We live within the law or decide to go rogue.
Law enforcement officers will enforce the law. They didn’t make them. They enforce them. They are the street level of our justice system.
There seems to be some disconnect for some people, who are unable to come to grips with this reality.
I might like to do a lot of things. If they aren’t legal, I won’t be doing them. I don’t want to be confronted by law enforcement. I don’t want to go before a judge and jury. I don’t want to be some guy’s bitch in prison.
This doesn’t make me some sort of oddball. It makes me a mature man that knows his limits.
If I decide to break the law, I am asking men who do not make the laws, deal with my wrath for enforcing them. I see no value in that.
Why should I curse them, fight them, or cause then to have to deal with me, just because I don’t like laws that were made without their input?
My choices are to accept the laws, try to get them changed, or submit myself to the justice system.
That is reality.
What the Bilderburgers or Rockerfellers or other special interest or organized crime syndicates do to affect our laws, I can’t control. I can control myself.
Freedom from the law, means not subjecting yourself to the penalties for breaking the law.
I enjoy my life. I have a few beers or a few hard drinks once in a great while. Other than that I get high on life.
Those who can’t have my sympathy.
Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.