**THE DEATH OF POLITICAL COURAGE AND RESPONSIBILITY** Political courage is apparently dead. I waited 24 hours. I really cant wait any longer. Or avoid the issue. Even though I know it will likely incur opprobrium. For the very first time, I watched what purports to be at least part of the notorious Eric Garner video yesterday. I was gobsmacked - tinyurl/oh94f6v. I had to check three times that I was watching the right video. Then, I cross-checked with all manner of political journals (which is how I wound up with the weird article below). Finally I watched the video itself about six times. Lets get a few caveats in first. Eric Garners death is tragic. Six children will spend this Christmas without their father. I want a society where this sort of needless death does not happen. Period. Do I like the way the police behaved? No. This is why I am advocating to explore the possibility of citizen oversight of police in my own community of Carrboro, NC [tinyurl/nzkn6jp]. So that communities have the opportunity to design the sort of policing they want. One of the issues I want considered is the disarming of front-line police officers [tinyurl/m8btudl]. There are 32,000 gun deaths each year in the US. Some 600 of those are deaths of ordinary citizens at the hands of the police. The proportion may seem small. But we need to start reducing the tension somewhere. But heres the thing. Disarming the police would not have prevented Eric Garners death. Im not even sure that allowing citizens to design the Rules of Engagement between police and an unruly citizen would have made much difference. Next caveat. Grand juries are defunct. There are too few rules. They exist primarily to protect potential defendants. There is no representation of victims. They are entirely run by local prosecutors, who are too closely allied to police. At which point, I run out of caveats. Ive now read about the allegation that Eric Garner was being stopped and arrested for potential sale of loose cigarettes. Didnt know that. Not of interest. What is of interest. What I do see. What I see every time I watch this video. What I see for several minutes, before the police do anything. Including what appears to be a mid-video edit. What I see is a man over six feet tall, a big man, weighing possibly 300 pounds. Out of control. Yelling at police officers. Where is there one single person in the United States saying this man had no business yelling at the police? I have heard much in the past few weeks from people who do not like the police, who do not want any form of hierarchical law enforcement authority at all. I say to them. If we had no police, please share with me the society you would design that would deal with a situation where a yelling, six foot, 300 pound man, is out of control? Did Eric Garner deserve to die because he was selling loose cigarettes? No. Did he deserve to die because he was yelling? No. Did he deserve to die because he was resisting arrest? No. Do we need to do something about gung-ho police in our society? Yes. But. We all need also to take responsibility for ourselves.For our families, for our friends, for our neighbors, for our communities, for our police. At what point is anyone going to say that not only do police need not to misbehave, the likes of Eric Garner need not to misbehave also. A few more points; 1) Why was a taser not used? Same goes with Michael Brown, actually. Comes back to my point about communities writing the Rules of Engagement. 2) Grand juries suck. Given. But, Ill stick my neck out. If I was on a jury in a normal criminal trial, I would not have found the police officer guilty of murder. Maybe. Just maybe, manslaughter. The police held off for the longest time. They should have used a taser. Bad decision. They then finally decided to arrest Garner, who was yelling, resisting, and again, was a 300 pound, six foot tall guy. How on earth did they expect to bring him down? Would anyone expect to bring him down? Jumping on his back, and attempting some sort of tackle was stupid. Tragically, awfully, horribly stupid. But it was not malicious. Or mean. There was clearly no intent to kill. Even to hurt. Merely to tackle to the ground. At which point, I have a problem. I am painfully aware that we ask a terrible duty of those who perform law enforcement. We can not senselessly ask them to face death or injury, without allowing them some leeway. I am also acutely aware that, sometimes, that leeway gets out of hand. That is why I want citizens to write the Rules of Engagement. That is why I want constant and regular citizen oversight of our police. But this man needed to be controlled. He needed to be arrested and taken somewhere to cool off. Exactly what Rules of Engagement would you write to avoid the tragic mistake that occurred? In those circumstances, I would find it very difficult to convict. I would, instead, leave the Jury Room determined to ensure that we had better citizen control of our police. Eric Garner did not deserve to die because he was out of control. That police officer does not deserve to go to prison because society expected him to get Eric Garner under control. 3) The real crime here is that no-one gave Garner CPR - tinyurl/pe5o9fa. I do know there are problems with authorities giving CPR due to lawsuits brought in the past. Frankly, as disturbing as I find this aspect, I find even more disturbing the fact that the camera holder thought it more important to take the video rather than call the emergency services, apply CPR himself or scream at the police to do something. I am horribly reminded of the movie Nightcrawler. Much needs to change in our society to avoid horrible tragedies like Eric Garner and Michael Brown. And the most important change remains, in my opinion, that we all need to start taking responsibility and exercising self-control. We also need to start engaging in a tad more honest, outspoken courage.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 23:49:28 +0000
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