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| As racial tension between police and citizens rises with several big cases, including the death of Eric Garner, police forces, including the recently-investigated Cleveland Police, are looking for ways to reform and repair relationships. Image: Denise Kappa / Shutterstock.com |
A grand jury cleared New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo
on Wednesday, leading to a series of protests across the country regarding yet
another death of a black man at the hands of a white police officer.
Pantaleo was charged with choking a black man to death
during an arrest attempt. A city medical
examiner ruled the death of 43-year-old Eric Garner a homicide, stating that
Pantaleo had compressed Garner’s neck and chest with enough force to choke him
to death.
Legally, the question became whether or not the
amount of force was necessary. New York
City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Patrick
Lynch told reporters that Pantaleo had acted properly in restraining
Garner, saying, “He’s a model of what we want a police officer to be.”
Pantaleo’s lawyer, Stuart London, told Reuters on Thursday that Pantaleo had properly
applied an approved takedown technique.
However, chokeholds are technically banned in most situations by the
police procedure manual.
Reverend Al Sharpton and other civil rights leaders
determined the incident to be police abuse, calling for a special federal
prosecutor to investigate the Garner case as well as similar recent cases,
including the shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson and
the death of a 12-year-old boy who was carrying a toy gun on a playground. In both instances, the victim was black and
the shooter was a white police officer. "We want the justice department to
address the fact that the system is broken when you are dealing with the police
and people of color," Sharpton said in a news conference.
Protests began as
early as Wednesday night in Manhattan, where hundreds swarmed the streets,
chanting, “I can’t breathe,” the phrase Garner repeatedly gasped in a video of
the incident leading to his death.
Protests also occurred in Oakland, Washington, D.C., and Denver.
In a separate
announcement on Thursday, US
Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department’s
investigation of the Cleveland Police Department had found that they
systematically engage in excessive use of force against civilians. According to the report, they use guns,
tasers, pepper spray, and even fists either unnecessarily or in retaliation,
often against the mentally ill. Because
of this pattern of what the report calls “unreasonable and unnecessary use of
force,” the city of Cleveland and the Justice Department have signed an
agreement to develop a reform procedure.
No criminal charges will be filed.
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