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In response to the Notre Dame Women's Basketball team going onto the court in "I Can't Breathe" shirts in solidarity and sympathy in the death of unarmed Eric Garner at the hands of police, a local area police officers has decided to put out his own T-shirt line that states people should "Breathe Easy" and "Don't Break the Law".
And he think that this is somehow going to be a "Uniting Message" rather than the "Divisive" one of "I Can't Breathe".
A company called South Bend Uniform is now advertising a shirt with a different slogan, "Breathe Easy. Don't Break the Law." South Bend Uniform's Owner is Corporal Jason Barthel, an officer from the Mishawaka Police Department. "I felt like there needed to be another side of the story," Barthel tells FOX28. "This is intended to be a uniting and positive thing, not to divide."
South Bend Uniform posted the following on Facebook Page in response:
There has been both positive and negative reaction to the shirt on the company's Facebook Page. The company posted this in response: "For those upset, please understand when we use the slogan "Breathe Easy" we are referring to knowing the police are there for you! We are one people, one nation regardless of race, religion, creed or gender. We are all in this together. The police are here to protect and serve. 99.9% of us have the greater good in our hearts each time we strap on our uniforms and duty belts. We are all one people and this is by no means is a slam on Eric Garner or his family, God rest his soul. Lets all band together as AMERICANS regardless of our feelings and know we can and will be better! Thank you for your support."
I think it's pretty obvious that this is a great long way from "uniting" anyone. The "I Can't Breathe" shirt speaks to the fact that Garner was clearly in distress as officers grabbed him around the neck, stepped on his head and jumped on his back - and
no one in authority listened to him. He lay there unconscious for crucial minutes and received no attention or care while officers milled around. EMT's were also pretty much non chalant and consequently he died. There's no
division in any of that, those are the facts.
What's not at fact is the idea that somehow Garner - or anyone - might have deserved this type of treatment because he or she "Broke The Law". The point is that this is a nation that is supposed to support the idea of Innocent Until Proven Guillty as opposed to Potential Violence Target until Proven Non-Threatening.
Please continue reading over the fold.
Even if that officers intentions are well-meaning, and I believe they probably are, I think they are also deeply misguided and insensitive. He has a right to sell whatever he wants to sell - and in fact he appears to have sold thousands of them - but what I wonder is - how valid is the underlying premise?
Exactly what crime did Jonathon Crawford commit as he was gunned down within 2 seconds while holding a toy pellet gun he picked up the shelves at Walmart?
Exactly what crime did Tamir Rice commit with a toy gun in his waist-band to be shot down within just 1 second of Police arriving on the scene?
Exactly what crime did Oscar Grant commit as he lay face down and hand-cuffed only to be shot in the back?
Exactly what crime did Trayvon Martin commit as he walked home from the store while being stalked by an armed George Zimmerman?
What crime did Kendrec McDade commit after a false police report was filed over a "gun point robbery" that didn't happen as described and didn't involve McDade?
Unfortunately these cases are not nearly "isolated" enough, dozens of times each year.
And one more question: Did Eric Garner actually commit a crime?
Many people have relied on the release of information that Garner had been arrested 30 times in the last 34 years (including arrests that must have occurred when he was as young as ten years old) as an indicator of his probable guilt in this case, but what I haven't - yet - seen is an indication of how many of these arrests were actually sustained with evidence and led to some type of conviction? Is it at all possible that this isn't a record of Garner's "criminality" but is instead a detailed record of ongoing police harassment he endured during his entire life?
Perhaps that pattern of that harrassment can be seen more clearly when one notes that over seven years ago Eric Garner filed a Civil Harrassment Suit against the NYPD.
On Sept. 12, 2007, while being held in the Otis Barnum Correctional Center on Rikers, he wrote on a court form document: "On September. 1, 2007, at approx.. 7:30 p.m. on the corner of Castleton Ave & Heberton Ave [a police officer] and his team stopped me for reasons of there own. I was ordered to place my hands on the black SUV in which they were riding in.
"I complied with no problem. [The officer] then patted me down by ways of going through my pockets and socks and not finding anything illegal on my person. [The officer] then places me in handcuffs and then performs an cavity search on me by ways of 'digging his fingers in my rectum in the middle of the street.' "
Garner claimed the officer unzipped his shorts, and pulled out and inspected his genitals "in the middle of the street, all the while there are people passing back and forth. I told [the officer] to stop and if he wanted to do a strip search on me I'm willing to go to the police station if he wanted to because I had nothing to hide, my request was ignored.
In effect, Garner claims that he had been
sexually assaulted by a forced strip search in public by an NYPD officer, yet his suit ultimately went nowhere and was dismissed because he failed to provide a forwarding address.
More specific than his general record the claim has been made that Garner had a "history" of violating the law prohibiting sales of "loose/untaxed cigarettes", as shown by these examples.
Garner, 43, gave cops a phony name and put himself in more hot water when officers allegedly found untaxed cigarettes and a small amount of marijuana in the 1998 Lincoln Navigator he was driving, the complaint said.
He was charged with aggravated unlicensed vehicle operation, false personation, possession or sale of untaxed cigarettes and marijuana possession, according to information from District Attorney Daniel Donovan's office.
Seven months later, while out on $1,000 bail, Garner was busted on March 28 for allegedly selling unstamped cigarettes on the street outside of 200 Bay St., Tompkinsville. He had 24 packs of untaxed smokes in his possession, police said.
So it is
assumed that, yet again, Garner was just doing what he'd been arrested for previously - the question that hasn't been frequently asked is -
was he?
Here is a detailed copy of the now infamous Eric Garner Video which includes an exclusive Time interview with the videographer Ramsey Orta.
Not only did the video fail to spark the indictment of Officer Daniel Pantaleo (despite his three previous lawsuits of excessive force against blacks in a NY borough that has the highest rate of officer lawsuits while having the fewest people in it) it similarly doesn't prove Eric Garner guilty of "selling loosies".
Orta was there from before the Police arrive on the scene and repeatedly, on both the video and in the interview, states that Garner was not selling loose cigarettes and that instead he had just broken up a fight between two other individuals. The reason Orta started filming in the first place was because Garner had done the right thing in that situation, yet police were focusing all their attention on him rather than the people who had been fighting.
He says "I did nothing..." he even points at the camera - "He's sitting here the whole time, minding our business!"
You can hear, as Garner protests, the Officer state that he himself saw Garner sell some cigarettes to someone. When Garner asks "Who did I sell a cigarette to?" the Officers turns around, points vaguely and says, "Not that red shirt, there's another guy in a red shirt..." And then eventually he says "I doesn't matter", to which Eric reponds with...
What do you mean it doesn't matter? Just because you say I did it, I did it? Well, I didn't.
Officer says something about "Your bag..."
To which Eric explodes.
My BAG? I aint got not Bag?!
And from what you can see in the video
there is no bag. You know what else there isn't unlike the previous cases shown above? There's
No Cigarettes!
After this the Officers move in and begin to wrestle Garner to ground and we all known what happened after that. New York does not allow for people to legally resist arrest, but it does beg the question - what exactly stands in the way of officers making false or simply incorrect charges, issuing false summons, and false arrests over and over against subjects they know - or they suspect - without there claims actually being true?
I'm not saying all Officers do that, but some do. Particularly in a city whose 20 year police practice was to stop people on the street and search them literally for no valid reason. Without any actual articulable suspicion or probable case at all. A practice which generated no citation and no arrest 90% of the Time. Our entirely legal system is predicated on the idea that the Officers have to prove their case for the very reason that the power and latitude we grant officers to detain, arrest and even kill citizens has to be used and deployed with utmost care and discretion.
Somewhere along the way a great many of us have lost sight of that. Unfortunately a great many of those people, those who don't understand that "Breathe Easy" is exactly what we shouldn't ever do when it comes to the application of deadly force...
are Cops.
Being as "Suspect" shouldn't come with a Death Sentence.
Vyan