Thousands of protesters have swarmed the streets of New York City for a second night to protest a grand jury’s decision not to indict the white police officer who killed Eric Garner. Garner, an African-American father of six, died after police placed him in a banned chokehold, piled on top of him and pinned him to the ground while he pleaded with them, saying at least 11 times, “I can’t breathe.” That phrase has become the rallying cry of protesters who shut down traffic on the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, the West Side Highway and the Holland Tunnel. Police said they arrested more than 200 people, many near Times Square. The decision came on the heels of another grand jury’s decision in Ferguson, Missouri, not to indict the white police officer who killed the African-American teenager Michael Brown. Rev. Al Sharpton has called for a march on Washington next Saturday to demand action from the federal government.
Al Sharpton: “We need to first centralize and be focused that the federal government must do in the 21st century what it did in the mid-20th century. Federal intervention had to come into the South to protect people’s civil rights and voting rights. Federal intervention must come now and protect people from state grand juries that keep exonerating any seeking of redress on police matters. And that’s what the 13th is about.”
Amidst the nationwide uproar over the Eric Garner decision, another case has come to light in Phoenix, Arizona, where a white police officer killed an unarmed black man. Phoenix police say the officer — who has not been named — feared that Rumain Brisbon had a gun because he felt something in his pocket, which turned out to be a pill bottle. The police say they suspected Brisbon of involvement in a drug deal and shot him after he fled into an apartment. But protesters say Brisbon was delivering dinner to his children. He is a father of four. Marci Kratter is an attorney for Brisbon’s family.
Marci Kratter: We need to take a deeper dive into why police officers are feeling compelled to shoot and kill as opposed to apprehend and detain, arrest and jail.”
A Justice Department investigation has found a pattern of “unreasonable and unnecessary” force by police officers in Cleveland, Ohio. The report details a history of abuse across hundreds of cases, characterizing police behavior as “chaotic and dangerous.” In some cases, Cleveland police opened fire on people who were running away and posed no threat. In one case, the Justice Department said a Cleveland police officer punched a handcuffed 13-year-old boy in the face repeatedly; in another, police used a Taser on a man who was strapped to a gurney and experiencing seizures, because he was making verbal threats. The investigation was launched last year but comes on the heels of the fatal police shooting of 12-year-old African American Tamir Rice, who was killed while holding a toy gun. We will go to Ohio to speak with Democratic Ohio state Senator Nina Turner about the case later in the broadcast.
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