In 2014, the murder of Eric Garner at the hands of a police officer was caught on camera, barely 10 minutes away from where my family lives on Staten Island.
In the bystander-caught video, you can hear Garner gasping, “I can’t breathe” 11 times as he lies with his face pressed into the sun-baked concrete. He lay unconscious on that sidewalk for seven minutes as police officers, and eventually EMTs, stood by.
His alleged crime? Selling loose cigarettes.
Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who put Garner in a chokehold prohibited under NYPD regulations, had already been sued by three men over allegedly unlawful arrests of Black Staten Islanders in the two years prior to his run-in with Garner.
Read more: https://forward.com/opinion/468111/derek-chauvin-guilty-verdict-isnt-justice-but-a-start/
