“We will defend these police officers,” Pat Lynch said, combatively, on Tuesday.
The head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association went on, “This was not a chokehold. We will get medical examiners to go over this autopsy when it is finally released.”
At last, someone’s standing up for common sense.
For sometimes, the victims aren’t so much “victims” as they are instigators of incidents that lead to unhappy outcomes — which, indeed, likely never would’ve happened if they had simply obeyed the law.
Take Eric Garner.
Garner died while resisting arrest on Staten Island July 18. The city medical examiner last week termed his death a “homicide” caused by a “chokehold” applied by one of the arresting officers — which a controversial video suggests is true, as far as that goes.
Which isn’t necessarily very far, as we shall see.
For a bad guy, Garner wasn’t particularly fearsome — but he persistently violated the law, had a long arrest record and on the day he died, he was once again selling untaxed cigarettes on the street (in unfair competition with local merchants, who pay full freight for their goods), cops said.
It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was against the law — and thus did Eric Garner once again attract the attention of the police.
But this time, he shouted that he was being harassed — and wasn’t going to go quietly.
“This ends here,” he announced — and a struggle began.
At 6-foot-3 and 350 pounds, Garner had to be taken seriously. That he was also obese, diabetic and severely asthmatic — factors the ME said contributed to his death — should’ve given him pause, if nobody else, but it didn’t.
A video of the ensuing — fatal — struggle shows a cop trying to restrain Garner by placing a forearm across his throat. This was an apparent violation of long-standing NYPD policy and a highly problematic tactic in any event.
Last Friday, the ME announced that Garner’s death was caused principally by the “chokehold,” along with chest compression — and was, indeed, a “homicide.”
That was all Al Sharpton and his claque needed to hear: The arresting officers, they cried, needed to go to jail.
And it may come to that. But don’t bet on it.
Not based on the evidence we have so far, anyway.
Again, it was Garner who started the fatal fight. His death, while a tragedy for his extended family, doesn’t make him a martyr — and it doesn’t make resisting arrest any less of a crime.
The much-quoted ME’s “report” notwithstanding.
It is, in fact, no report at all, but rather, a press release.
It’s an incendiary press release, for sure — all the more so coming from a public official who serves at the pleasure of a new mayor who is now walking a deliberate, but very thin, line when it comes to public safety.
The full report, such as it may turn out to be, isn’t yet public and likely won’t be for some time — although Staten Island DA Dan Donovan is no doubt studying it closely.
For the moment, though, two elements in the press release deserve attention:
- Irresponsible use of the term “homicide.” The word doesn’t mean “murder,” as Sharpton, et al., charge. It doesn’t even mean “crime.” It describes the death of one person, caused by another person, and it’s up to competent legal authority to sort out the details — which Donovan can be counted on to do.
- The equally misleading use of the word “chokehold.” It’s not clear what that even means, not in any legal sense. Moreover, while “chokeholds” violate NYPD policy in most (but not all) circumstances, they’re not illegal under state law. This could be of real significance down the road.
Sharpton, of course, sees Garner’s death as a chance to enhance his own standing (what else is new?) and has found considerable traction with the de Blasio administration.
What else could the mayor’s “roundtable discussion” last week have meant? Mayor Bill de Blasio sat between Sharpton and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, awarding moral equivalence to the rabble-rousing reverend and blurring Bratton’s authority to a dangerous degree.
Fine. David Dinkins used to do that all the time, and New York survived — though barely.
But not without acrimony — which was forthcoming Tuesday from Pat Lynch. Correctly so. The PBA head stood up for his members, as he should. As he must.
Meanwhile, the emergence of Sharpton as a public-safety player, the diminishment of Bratton’s authority, and de Blasio’s seeming ambivalence about it all suggest a Police Department that is going adrift.
New York has been there before. It’s not a happy place.