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A New York City grand jury has declined to indict a white police officer in the case of Eric Garner, a 43-year-old unarmed black man who died July 17 in a police chokehold, the Staten Island district attorney announced Wednesday. VPC
This undated family photo provided by the National Action Network on July 19, 2014, shows Eric Garner.(Photo: AP)
Sparking protests in several cities, social media outrage and a U.S. civil rights probe, a New York City grand jury declined to indict a white police officer in the death of a black man put in a chokehold after selling untaxed cigarettes.
The grand jury found "no reasonable cause" to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo, who was attempting to arrest Eric Garner, 43, on July 17.
As angry crowds gathered tonight to protest in Manhattan, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department is opening a federal civil rights inquiry.
Holder, while urging calm in the aftermath of yet another controversial grand jury action, promised that the federal inquiry would be "independent, thorough and fair.''
President Obama said the grand jury decision will spark strong reaction from the public, especially in the wake of a similar decision in Missouri last week not to indict officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed Michael Brown.
"There was a decision that came out today by a grand jury not to indict police officers who had interacted with an individual named Eric Garner in New York City -- all of which was caught on video tape and speaks to the larger issues that we've been talking about now for the last week, the last month, the last year and, sadly, for decades," Obama said.
"And that is the concern on the part of too many minority communities that law enforcement is not working with them and dealing with them in a fair way . . .this is an issue that we've been dealing with for too long, and it's time for us to make more progress than we've made. And I'm not interested in talk, I'm interested in action."
The medical examiner had ruled Garner's death a homicide. State charges could have ranged from murder to reckless endangerment.
Garner, who had asthma, could be heard on a cellphone video shouting, "I can't breathe" at least eight times as Pantaleo takes him down in what appears to be a chokehold, an action the New York Police Department prohibits. He died in a hospital hours later.
The video was shot by a citizen standing near the confrontation.
Family members expressed shock at the grand jury news - but said they will not give up the pursuit of justice.
"The fight isn't over - it's just begun," said the widow of Eric Garner, Esaw Garner. She added that her husband would not be around for Christmas or any other special day anymore with the family.
"Why? Because a cop did wrong," she said to a room packed with about 200 community members and members of the media. "As long as I have a breath in my body, I will fight the fight."
Family lawyer Jonathan Moore said he was "actually astonished based on the evidence of the videotape, and the medical examiner, that this grand jury at this time wouldn't indict for anything."
In his first public comments, Pantaleo said he prays for Garner's family and hopes they accept his condolences.
"I became a police officer to help people and to protect those who can't protect themselves," he said in the statement. "It is never my intention to harm anyone, and I feel very bad about the death of Mr. Garner."
Police union officials and Pantaleo's lawyer argued that the officer used a takedown move taught by the police department, not a banned maneuver, because Garner was resisting arrest. They said his poor health was the main reason he died.
Standing with the widow, mother and children of Garner, the Rev. Al Sharpton decried the grand jury decision at the Harlem, N.Y., headquarters of Sharpton's National Action Network, a civil rights organization.
"How many people have to die before people have to understand this is not an illusion?" Sharpton asked, as one of Garner's daughters wiped away tears.
"This is a reality that America has got to come to terms with," he said.
A man holds a sign as he takes part in a Dec. 3, 2014, protest on 6th Avenue in Manhattan after a grand jury decided not to indict New York Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo in Eric Garner's death.(Photo: Kena Betancur, Getty Images)
Sharpton called for a national march to take place in Washington Dec. 13 to press for changes in the justice system. "We are not advocating violence, we are asking that police violence stop," he said.
A crowd of an estimated 200-300 protesters gathered in Times Square shortly before 5:30 p.m. Massing in a pedestrian area below the financial data streaming across the façade of the Nasdaq building, protestors alternated chants of Eric Garner's last words, "I Can't Breathe," with "Hands up, Don't shoot," and "No Justice, No Peace, No Racist Police."
Brooklyn resident Timothy Duwhite, 24, said he joined the demonstration because he'd lost faith in the U.S. justice system.
"I'm not even interested in a trial at this point," he said, referring to the New York City police officer who put Garner in a chokehold. "It would just make the public think that the system is working, and it's not. It would just lull people into thinking everything's okay."
Joined by a smaller group that had protested in Grand Central Terminal, the crowd grew in size as the evening wore on. Other protesters joined, swelling the crowd size into the hundreds, as the group set off on a circuitous march that disrupted Midtown Manhattan traffic during the evening rush hour.
At one point, a city fire department ambulance was stuck in traffic on Madison Ave., its siren wailing, as protesters streamed southbound in and around the northbound vehicles.
The protesters seemed determined to reach Rockefeller Center, where the annual Christmas-tree lighting ceremony was taking place in a nationally broadcast TV tradition. But metal police barricades blocked in a perimeter several blocks on all sides of Rockefeller Center.
Police officers on scooters, horseback and in the streets worked to keep the protesters from getting past the barriers.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said that he spoke with Attorney General Eric Holder, who pledged that the federal government would investigate the matter and that local U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch would oversee it.
A man, left, holds his hands up as New York City Police officers secure a street near Rockefeller Center during a protest after it was announced that the police officer involved in the death of Eric Garner is not being indicted, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2014, in New York. A grand jury cleared the(Photo: Julio Cortez, AP)
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Lynch has been nominated to succeed Holder as attorney general and if confirmed by the Senate would become the first African American woman to hold the office.
De Blasio said he'd also met with Ben Garner, Eric Garner's father, and said the elder Garner was in "unspeakable pain." He added, "No family should have to go through what the Garner family went through."
The city, the country and the justice system are dealing with "centuries of racism," the mayor said.
De Blasio made reference to similar cases around the nation, including the recent death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, shot by police after being spotted with what turned out to be a toy gun.
"All of these pains add up and demand of us action," he said.
NYC Public Advocate Letitia James called for the grand jury records in the Garner case to be unsealed.
"This has to stop," James said. "Every New Yorker has seen the video."
A 400- pound asthmatic Eric Garner died while being arrested by police in Staten Island on July 17.(Photo: NY Daily News via Getty Images)
The decision comes nine days after a grand jury declined to Wilson, a Fersuson, Mo. police officer in the shooting death of Brown, an 18-year-old African American. That decision set off waves of protests across the country.
ERIC GARNER: Death of NYC man after chokehold prompts probe
Soon after the announcement Wednesday, social media exploded with outrage and calls for demonstrations in the streets.
Several hundred protesters began gathering in Times Square. Among the signs were "Justice for Garner," "Black Lives Matter" and "This Stops Today." The crowd chanted in unison, "No justice, no peace, no racist police." Others shouted, "No indictment is denial," and "We want a proper trial."
Some demonstrators were holding their hands in the "don't shoot" position that was common in the Ferguson protests.
In Clayton, Mo.-- where last week St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch announced the grand jury's decision not to indict Wilson - about 125 protesters took to the streets to voice their outrage over the decisions in both the Brown and Garner cases.
As the demonstration, which was organized by Metropolitan Churches United and faith group Gamaliel, wound it's way through downtown Clayton, the protesters chanted "Another no indictment,I can't breathe" and "hands-up, don't shoot" in reference to Brown.
"To have the outcome we had today ion New York with the grand jury over Eric Garner's martyr was atrocious," said the Rev. John Welch of Pittsburgh. "No indictment is an indictment of the judicial system."
While protesters were emotional, the demonstration was peaceful and orderly. Police blocked off streets for part of the march but kept their distance.
In nearby St. Louis at about 8:45 pm CT, more than 100 hundred protesters blocked a busy intersection and locked hands. With police warning that the protesters were unlawfully assembled and blocking an area near a hospital, protest organizer Derrick Robinson hushed the crowd for a two minute moment of silence for Eric Garner. They then dispersed from the intersection.
The civil rights advocacy group Ferguson Action Team issued a statement encouraging protest.
"We must all take to the streets and stand in solidarity with New Yorkers who will gather in Eric's memory," the group said in a statement. "Eric's case illustrates the way police operate with impunity in black communities as they cast an ever-widening net of criminalization. In his case, he was harassed by officers who suspected him of selling untaxed, loose cigarettes. For that, he lost his life."
A group called This Stops Now had been planning protests regardless of the grand jury's decision.
The group said in a news release, "Regardless of the verdict, we'll be hitting the streets to demand #Justicefor Eric Garner and an end to broken window policing," the practice of strong enforcement against petty offenses to battle disorder that fosters more serious crime. "A grand jury indictment doesn't equal justice. In cases where a grand jury has indicted, the majority of time the officers are found not guilty at trial."
Garner's case came in a year that has seen several black people injured or killed in altercations with police, prompting civil rights organizations to call for reviews of police procedures nationwide and for police officers to wear body cameras while on duty.
After last week's decision by a Missouri grand jury not to indict former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, NAACP President and CEO Cornell Brooks told CBS This Morning that police procedures across the country must change.
"We're calling on people to push for a change in policing, a change in the way we police our communities. We're calling for legislative reform," Brooks said. "We're calling for the kind of systemic, fundamental reform that can change this country and prevent future deaths. We have Michael Brown, we have Eric Garner, we have a litany and a list of young people who have lost their lives at the hands of police. This cannot be tolerated. It can't go on, and we have to step up and do something about it."
Last week's Ferguson protests stopped traffic on two major New York City highways and in the Lincoln Tunnel, which carries commuters between New Jersey and Manhattan. This time, de Blasio said Tuesday, if protests interrupt traffic, people will be arrested.
"If we think public safety is compromised, the police will have to very assertively address that problem," de Blasio said. "We need to get traffic and we need to get emergency vehicles through."
Contributing: Michael Winter, Kevin McCoy, Aamer Madhani, USA TODAY; Associated Press
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