Eric Garner

[GannonFan]

That's what I don't get - the guy did something to a civilian (a choke hold) that was expressly forbidden by police guidelines, when his own life was not really in danger, and yet the grand jury can't find something to charge him with? Equating this with the Michael Brown case is apples to oranges, IMO, in this case the cop clearly violated his own police force rules, with no apparent cause to do so, and those actions resulted in a death. It's not murder, that's way too hard to prove here, but negligent manslaughter or something like that looks like a slam dunk. Would be great if the grand jury deliberations in this case were made public.

Thats the crux of the issue that so many people misunderstand in all of this. Choke holds are banned not because police use them to kill people (that would be criminal) but because they can be dangerous if you dont do them exactly right, especially with people who may have other underlying health issues. So negligence does most closely describe what this guy did, but the consequences are going to be civil, not criminal. The rules grand juries operate under make it difficult to indict police criminally for deaths where the officer is trying to make a lawful arrest. The reason for this is that if the contact itself is lawful, then so is a certain amount of violence. The grand jury would have to determine that it was the officer's intent to kill the suspect and intent is one of the hardest things to prove in any legal case.

This leads to situations like this one, but it is very similar to the "no duty to protect" rule- it is there for a very legitimate reason that is not always obvious. Especially when something like this happens.

I don't think the guy did anything to harm him intentionally, that's why a murder charge would never work. But the guy was clearly negligent and that should've been handled in a criminal court. Sure, he's toast in a civil trial, and rightfully so, but there was a crime committed here and the grand jury punked out on this one.

[GannonFan]

All I really care about is I'm going to NYC in a month & don't want to see any jobless protestors stopping traffic, etc....

I agree, and I'm serious here, nothing makes me want to support a cause less than being stuck in hours of traffic and being truly inconvenienced because a group of people decided on their own that their cause was so important that they needed to screw over thousands of other people to try to force them to accept their interpretation of their cause. If your cause is worthy it should stand on its on through other types of protest, not through basically being dicks.

[DSUrocks07]

All I really care about is I'm going to NYC in a month & don't want to see any jobless protestors stopping traffic, etc....

I agree, and I'm serious here, nothing makes me want to support a cause less than being stuck in hours of traffic and being truly inconvenienced because a group of people decided on their own that their cause was so important that they needed to screw over thousands of other people to try to force them to accept their interpretation of their cause. If your cause is worthy it should stand on its on through other types of protest, not through basically being dicks.

Got into a debate with a friend on FB about a week ago about this exact thing.

[YoUDeeMan]

I agree, and I'm serious here, nothing makes me want to support a cause less than being stuck in hours of traffic and being truly inconvenienced because a group of people decided on their own that their cause was so important that they needed to screw over thousands of other people to try to force them to accept their interpretation of their cause. If your cause is worthy it should stand on its on through other types of protest, not through basically being dicks.

Got into a debate with a friend on FB about a week ago about this exact thing.

Did he de-friend you? If so, he's a Donk...it's what they do.