The New York Times:
One route to justice for Eric Garner was blocked on Wednesday, by a Staten Island grand jury’s confounding refusal to see anything potentially criminal in the police assault that killed him.
But the quest will continue. The fury that has prompted thousands to protest peacefully across New York City, and the swift promise by the Justice Department of a thorough investigation, may help ensure a just resolution to this tragedy. [...] But among the many needed reforms, there is one simple area that risks being overlooked. Besides the banned chokehold used by Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who brought Mr. Garner down, throwing a beefy arm around his neck, there was lethal danger in the way Mr. Garner was subdued — on his stomach, with a pile of cops on his back.
This breaks a basic rule of safe arrests, especially for people who, like Mr. Garner, are overweight and have medical problems like asthma. When the New York medical examiner’s office ruled Mr. Garner’s death a homicide, it cited “compression of neck (choke hold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.
Eugene Robinson:
This time, there were literally millions of eyewitnesses. Somebody tell me, just theoretically, how many does it take? Is there any number that would suffice? Or is this whole “equal justice before the law” thing just a cruel joke?
African American men are being taught a lesson about how this society values, or devalues, our lives. I’ve always said the notion that racism is a thing of the past was absurd — and that those who espoused the “post-racial” myth were either naive or disingenuous. Now, tragically, you see why.
More on this story below the fold...
The Hartford Courant:
Policing in this country has to change. It has to become less tactical and confrontational. It has to focus more on the well-being of community residents, on relationships in the neighborhoods. Officers must get to know the people they are working for and treat them with respect; residents must treat officers the same way.
If we don't, and a few more white officers kill black residents, the country risks going back to the urban violence of the late 1960s and early 1970s. No one wants that.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer:
What civic activists and critics of the police department have suspected and complained about for years is true. Cleveland police officers too frequently use excessive and deadly force when it's not called for, employ tactics that lead to the unnecessary use of deadly and excessive force and are not held accountable by their department when they do.
These are among the findings of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation of use of force by the Cleveland police force that was initiated in early 2013 and released to the public today at a press conference that featured U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
Eric L. Adams:
I CAN recall it as if it were yesterday: looking into the toilet and seeing blood instead of urine. That was the aftermath of my first police encounter.
As a 15-year-old, living in South Jamaica, Queens, I was arrested on a criminal trespass charge after unlawfully entering and remaining in the home of an acquaintance. Officers took me to the 103rd Precinct — the same precinct where an unarmed Sean Bell was later shot and killed by the police — and brought me into a room in the basement. They kicked me in the groin repeatedly. Out of every part of my body, that’s what they targeted. Then I spent the night in Spofford juvenile detention center.
USA Today:
What the two cases do have in common — and the reasons they've received such wide attention — is that they fit into a pattern of excessive use of force by police, often directed at African Americans, and a sense that cops too often escape justice for misconduct. Steps to address such tensions and tragedies need not await the results of continuing investigations into the Ferguson and Staten Island cases. Several options should be obvious now:
Better training. In police department budgets, training lags far behind salaries and equipment. That must change, and Thursday's announcement that the New York Police Department will retrain officers in how to de-escalate confrontations is worth emulating nationwide.
Better vetting. Some people just shouldn't be police, but police departments often do a terrible job of weeding out bad cops. The Cleveland officer who precipitously shot a 12-year-old boy with a BB pistol last month had been pushed out of a previous job when superiors found him emotionally unsuited to be an officer and "dismal" with firearms. The Cleveland police never read his personnel file before hiring him.
Amy Davidson:
As a matter of process, the route to the failure to indict is probably simple: the prosecutor who presented the case led the grand jurors that way. That’s how grand juries tend to work (and why criticisms of the outcome should not be taken as an attack on individual jurors); the bar for them to find probable cause to charge a person is low, unless—as transcripts show was the case in Ferguson—prosecutors decide to raise it. Given the incarceration rates in this country, most people don’t need a video tape to know that. The proceedings in Staten Island are still secret, but Pantaleo’s lawyer, Stuart London, told the Times that his client spoke to the grand jury for two hours. (Most potential defendants don’t get that chance.) “He wanted to get across to the grand jury that it was never his intention to injure or harm anyone,” London said. Pantaleo repeated that sentiment in a statement on Wednesday, adding that he had become a police officer to “protect” people and that Garner’s death made him feel bad: “My family and I include him and his family in our prayers and I hope that they will accept my personal condolences for their loss.”
Damon Linker:
I'm inclined to believe that most police officers are upstanding, honest people. But this can't possibly be true of all cops. How do we know this? Because they're human beings, flawed like the rest of us. And moreover, they're human beings who have chosen a career that puts them in a position of enormous authority, armed with live ammunition, and empowered by the state to use deadly force when they deem it necessary. Unlike the U.S. military, which launches bombing runs against enemy targets only on direct orders from superior officers, cops get to make the call to unleash deadly force all by themselves, in the heat of the moment. That's hard, requiring excellent judgment, enormous restraint, and other exemplary character traits.
And that's assuming that the officer means well.
Might it be possible that some — a few — police officers on active duty just might fail to live up to these exalted standards? That a few of them just might have a sadistic streak? Just might get off on lording their authority over others? Just might harbor explosive anger at the people who inspire fear in them when they're on the job?