Eric Garner Murder

[jpahmad]

I'm assuming Stefan is working on a "Truth About" presentation concerning the death of Eric Garner that was caught on video tape for everyone to see.  This is a slam dunk opportunity for us anarchists to demonstrate a principal outside of the cultural fogginess of "race-relations."  I am eagerly awaiting this video, as it would be the perfect follow up to the Ferguson series videos by exposing the predatory nature of quite a few individuals who make up "Americas Finest."

[MMX2010]

Seconded. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J-SzqUqIEM

 

 

When I watched both of those videos together, I was struck by: (1) Jon Stewart's possible (if not probable) ignorance about the "special legal protections" afforded police officers, (2) The American public's likely ignorance of same, and (3) the (likely large) extent to which both entities are dissatisfied with "civil solutions" - i.e. lawsuits. 

[yagami]

I didn't look into this until I saw this post but from what little I saw on the internet it does look like an accident. I seriously doubt the officer was trying to kill the guy. But I will say that if it is true that police officers aren't allowed to use choke holds and that's what he did and he was not indited then that isn't right in my opinion. I want to believe this is just like Ferguson in the sense that people are jumping to conclusions. But this was recorded. At the same time you gotta be pretty stupid to resist arrest as he clearly was doing. The cops can be very dangerous and you dont know what kind of cop you are dealing with. 

 

Morally the Eric Garner isn't at fault because the government is force and shouldn't be bothering him in the first place. But practically he is a fool for resisting the mafia in that way.

 

If we look at his through the lens of a statist the officer broke regulations (possibly I dont know the law exactly) by putting him in a choke hold and not a sleeper hold and Eric Garner broke the law by resisting arrest (assuming he actually broke the law in some way). Until we know those two factors I dont think it's possible to make judgments. Either way I just hope cops get cameras on them so they are more hesitant to use force to solve problems. But I do understand it's a dangerous job.

 

I personally would not be too excited about Steph reviewing this one. I feel like this is the second in what is to be a long string of police violence videos soon to come. People are really focused on the police right now and im sure there is going to be many more incidents like this popping up everywhere. Besides this doesn't seem to have anything to do with race. I mean not even close.

[Leevan]

Police are empowered to use (deadly) force if they perceive a threat to themselves or others. Gardner, etc. are just a consequence of state power. The police view black men as more dangerous/threatening, and so they give them less slack. A short term solution is to change how black men are perceived by the police, a long term, farther reaching solution, would be to vanquish the state.

[shirgall]

Everyone has the power to use deadly force to defend themselves from death or grave bodily harm, not just the police.

 

The power in question is that given by the state to the police to arrest people for crimes. These police would not have been threatened by this individual if they had not tried to arrest him for a bullshit crime. While the police may not be criminally liable for making an arrest here, an arrest that went horribly wrong, the civil liability for this should be enormous.

 

...And the bullshit crime should be gotten rid of.

[Leevan]

The police are empowered to confront ctitizens. When they confront black men, they perceive a greater initial threat. It's no wonder why this happens so often.

[jpahmad]

The police are empowered to confront ctitizens. When they confront black men, they perceive a greater initial threat. It's no wonder why this happens so often.

 

No,no,no.  This happened because the guy who choked Garner to death is a heartless predator.  If he had a conscience, he would be in danger of killing himself right now.  Because, what human being, with any empathy whatsoever, would be able to sleep at night after doing that to someone?

 

He knew what he was doing and he knew he could get away with it by hiding behind the institution of the state.  What the F#$! do you think happens when you put your arm around someone's neck and squeeze!?

[Leevan]

Do you think he wanted to kill the man? He saw an oppurtunity to finally get "one of them", and he took it? I don't know. It seems more plausible to me that the cop overreacted, and it ended up in death.

[jpahmad]

I don't think he cared whether the man lived or died.  He probably nearly came in his pants when he saw that he was going to get the opportunity to use his choke hold technique.  Either that or he has a very low IQ

[tritonx]

If cops could stop to act like psychopaths when they are in the street that would be great.

 

I have experienced it, witnessed it...

 

I also had good experiences with them when I needed their legitimate help.

 

It can be very confusing for an honest citizen.

[NGardner]

The real problem I believe is the escalation of force in the case. Selling loosies = chokehold doesnt jive well with me. This is a danger of slapping arrests on victimless crimes. Cops are vastly undertrained to use force. My friend took 14 years to acheive his black belt in his martial art. Any time you engage another human in violent action you have a risk of death. It makes no sense to attack a man selling loose cigarettes on the street. Why did they attack him? He was talking to them, he was not getting violent or trying to run. He allegedly broke the law. He had one pack of cigarettes on him. How is this possibly even a priority for 6 police officers? 6 police officers should lose their jobs because clearly they are not stopping real crime. 

[J. D. Stembal]

If police were privatized, needless accidental deaths like this wouldn't happen. The police are trained to act like Nazi Gestapo. It is no wonder that they act aggressively.

[jpahmad]

If it was an "accident" then why the hell did the guy not let up when Garner cries "I can't breath."  There are a lot of "meat heads" out there.  You know, people who take certain jobs so they can flex their muscles, like bouncers.  You ever see a bouncer go overboard when kicking someone out of a bar?  I have.  It's like, ok, the guy was a little drunk, you don't have to smash his face into the curb. 

 

 

 

The police are empowered to confront ctitizens. When they confront black men, they perceive a greater initial threat. It's no wonder why this happens so often.

 

Why become a cop if you can't keep a cool head in these sorts of situations that will inevitably pop up?   The guy wasn't threatening anyone. 

[shirgall]

Why become a cop if you can't keep a cool head in these sorts of situations that will inevitably pop up?   The guy wasn't threatening anyone. 

 

The choke hold didn't kill Garner, the constriction of his chest did. Also, what the video does not show is the alleged assault of a police officer in the minute before he was placed in the hold.

 

Don't get me wrong, it was wrong to kill Garner, especially over something so trivial as tax evasion. I hope the civil suit causes serious changes. The most serious change would be to get rid of laws that are so egregiously bad that it causes such levels of ire and disrespect that people will inevitably get into conflicts with police.

 

The state is capricious and unevenly applied in its torture of its chattel. That doesn't mean you should confront a cop on the street because it can get you killed.

[Pelafina]

The cop violated the NAP by initiating violence against an innocent person, therefore the cop is a criminal according to libertarian code.  If a libertarian does the right thing and attempts to arrest the cop who murdered Eric, he will be attacked by other cops.  

 

Therefore other cops are currently violating the NAP by threatening violence against the innocent libertarian who wants to arrest the cop who murdered Eric.  And therefore all cops are criminals.

[MMX2010]

Another article:  http://www.nhregister.com/opinion/20141204/norm-pattis-eric-garner-decision-right-call

 

Norm Pattis: Eric Garner decision right call

 

Eric Garner paid with his life for making a simple mistake: He played street lawyer when officers tried to arrest him. The time and place to dispute facts with a cop is not on the street. It is in a courtroom. Resist an officer trying to arrest you, and you may well end up injured, or even dead.

 

Store owners on Staten Island had complained to local police that Garner was selling individual cigarettes, known as loosies, in front of their shops. Apparently, that’s against the law. It may well be a silly law, but it is a law that is on the books.

 

Daniel Pantaleo, a young police officer, approached Garner with other officers. You can watch Garner protest on YouTube. “I did not sell nothing,” he says, as he backs away. Pantaleo was about to arrest him.

 

Police officers need not witness a crime take place to make an arrest. When it comes to minor offenses, they can arrest a person on the speedy information of others. In this case, it appears as if store owners complained about Garner, and officers, in reliance on the store owners, sought to arrest him.

 

Obviously, I have no idea whether Garner sold cigarettes or not. Most likely, the cops simply relied upon the accusations of others when they approached Garner. All that was necessary to detain him was a reasonable suspicion, more than a hunch, that he had broken the law. To arrest him, they need only conclude that there was a reasonable belief he broke the law.

 

Garner had every right to argue with the police, but the law requires all of us to submit to officers when they try to arrest us. If we resist, they are entitled to use reasonable force to overcome our resistance. It is generally foolish to pick a fight with a cop: not only are they trained in the use of force, they also come equipped with lethal tools to use to assure they win any confrontation.

 

In the Garner case, officers used what are called “take-down” holds to bring him down. They are trained to do that. You can see officers reach for his hands to make sure he did not swing them at him. Another officer got behind Garner, and ended up with his arm around Garner’s neck.

 

Then Garner was on all fours, and still four officers could not get him into a position in which they could handcuff him. Officers are trained in such situations to use the ground as leverage. That is precisely what they did in this instance, seeking to pin him so that they could get his hands behind his back.

 

As the officers and Garner struggle on the ground, Garner gasped: “I can’t breathe” eleven times. You can hear the officers telling him to put his hands behind his back. He doesn’t, and perhaps cannot, comply.

 

One officer, Pantaleo, ended up with his arm around Garner’s neck, in a choke hold prohibited by the New York Police Departments.

 

I’ve watched the video of the take down a dozen times, and, candidly, it looks just like any number of arrests I’ve seen. Police with suspicion confront a man to question him or arrest him. The man objects, and gets angry. The officers decide to take him into custody. The man does not comply with the officers’ commands, so they use force. White, black, Hispanic, the results are always the same – the struggler loses and is sometimes injured or killed.

 

An autopsy of Garner revealed that he died due to compression, or pressure, on his neck and chest. Among the contributing factors was the fact that he suffered from asthma and was obese; he also suffered from hypertensive cardiovascular disease. There’s no reason to suspect the officers knew of his medical history; the law does not require them to know it.

 

The police killed Eric Garner. This is a homicide, plain and simple.

 

But it is a long leap to go from homicide to a crime, and the Staten Island grand jury had good reason to refuse to indict, or charge, Pantaleo with a crime.

 

To prove murder, the grand jury would have had to conclude that Pantaleo had the conscious objective to kill Brown. The videotape reflects a struggle, not an execution.

 

To prove manslaughter, the grand jury would have had to conclude that Pantaleo was aware of a serious risk of injury and proceeded nonetheless. This is a closer call. Choke holds are prohibited because they do cause a serious risk of injury when pressure is applied on the carotid artery.

 

But what should the officers have done? Should they have walked away from Garner because he protested? That’s a standard with ridiculous consequences. The place to say the police got it wrong is in a courtroom. Not on the streets.

 

To prove negligent homicide, the grand jury would have to conclude the Pantaleo engaged in conduct that was a gross departure from the standard of care. This garden variety arrest of a man in response to garden variety criminal allegations simply isn’t shocking to those schooled in the business of evaluating police conduct.

 

Pantaleo most likely will face police discipline for using poor tactical judgment in how he helped take Garner to the ground. But that does not mean the take down itself was without justification. It was justified under current law, and it happens daily on streets throughout the United States.

 

Efforts to transform the Garner homicide into a race case are irresponsible.

 

We need to have a serious discussion about race in the United States. And the manner in which communities, particularly communities of color, are policed is often deeply troubling. But Eric Garner was everyman, not just a black man, in his deadly struggle.

 

The death of Eric Garner is not an example of racial injustice. It’s a tragic consequence of a man who refused to take his grievance to a courtroom, where it could be sorted out without violence. He paid for that mistake with his life. That does not make him a martyr.

 

----------------------------------------------------

 

Norm Pattis, a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer with offices in Bethany and New Haven, blogs at www.pattisblog.com. He is also the author of “Taking Back the Courts” and “Juries and Justice.” Email [email protected].

[shirgall]

The cop violated the NAP by initiating violence against an innocent person, therefore the cop is a criminal according to libertarian code.  If a libertarian does the right thing and attempts to arrest the cop who murdered Eric, he will be attacked by other cops.  

 

Therefore other cops are currently violating the NAP by threatening violence against the innocent libertarian who wants to arrest the cop who murdered Eric.  And therefore all cops are criminals.

 

Fair enough. Totally a non-starter. We have to do what we can do that is effective.

 

I think the right angle of attack is the bullshit tax law that initiated the arrest. "This man died because he didn't pay a $5 tax." And when people point out the assault Eric Garner did that escalated the incident to the choke hold, point out that the assault would not have happened if there was not a tax on cigarettes.

 

This is actually great fodder for the "against me" argument to use with your friends and family. We will get nowhere with anyone claiming that cops should not have arrest powers because the state is bad in and of itself, but we can whittle away at support for law and tax proliferation.

[WasatchMan]

This is a slam dunk opportunity for us anarchists to demonstrate a principal outside of the cultural fogginess of "race-relations."

 

I think another thing this case demonstrates is the validity of the "against me argument".

 

With Tf00t running around giggling & sighing about how silly it is to say someone wants you shot for disagreeing with them on a law, we have a real life case of someone being killed because of a CIGARETTE TAX.

[MMX2010]

I think another thing this case demonstrates is the validity of the "against me argument".

 

With Tf00t running around giggling & sighing about how silly it is to say someone wants you shot for disagreeing with them on a law, we have a real life case of someone being killed because of a CIGARETTE TAX.

 

Yup.  I loved this article. 

 

------------------

 

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-04/law-puts-us-all-in-same-danger-as-eric-garner

 

Law Puts Us All in Same Danger as Eric Garner

 

By Stephen L. Carter

 

On the opening day of law school, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce. Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you.

 

I wish this caution were only theoretical. It isn’t. Whatever your view on the refusal of a New York City grand jury to indict the police officer whose chokehold apparently led to the death of Eric Garner, it’s useful to remember the crime that Garner is alleged to have committed: He was selling individual cigarettes, or loosies, in violation of New York law.

 

The obvious racial dynamics of the case -- the police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, is white; Garner was black -- have sparked understandable outrage. But, at least among libertarians, so has the law that was being enforced. Wrote Nick Gillespie in the Daily Beast, “Clearly something has gone horribly wrong when a man lies dead after being confronted for selling cigarettes to willing buyers.” Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, appearing on MSNBC, also blamed the statute: “Some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes, so they’ve driven cigarettes underground by making them so expensive.”

 

The problem is actually broader. It’s not just cigarette tax laws that can lead to the death of those the police seek to arrest. It’s every law. Libertarians argue that we have far too many laws, and the Garner case offers evidence that they’re right. I often tell my students that there will never be a perfect technology of law enforcement, and therefore it is unavoidable that there will be situations where police err on the side of too much violence rather than too little. Better training won’t lead to perfection. But fewer laws would mean fewer opportunities for official violence to get out of hand.

 

The legal scholar Douglas Husak, in his excellent 2009 book “Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law,” points out that federal law alone includes more than 3,000 crimes, fewer than half of which found in the Federal Criminal Code. The rest are scattered through other statutes. A citizen who wants to abide by the law has no quick and easy way to find out what the law actually is -- a violation of the traditional principle that the state cannot punish without fair notice.

 

In addition to these statutes, he writes, an astonishing 300,000 or more federal regulations may be enforceable through criminal punishment in the discretion of an administrative agency. Nobody knows the number for sure.

 

Husak cites estimates that more than 70 percent of American adults have committed a crime that could lead to imprisonment. He quotes the legal scholar William Stuntz to the effect that we are moving toward “a world in which the law on the books makes everyone a felon.” Does this seem too dramatic? Husak points to studies suggesting that more than half of young people download music illegally from the Internet. That’s been a federal crime for almost 20 years. These kids, in theory, could all go to prison.

 

Many criminal laws hardly pass the giggle test. Husak takes us on a tour through bizarre statutes, including the Alabama law making it a crime to maim oneself for the purpose of gaining sympathy, the Florida law prohibiting displays of deformed animals, the Illinois law against “damaging anhydrous ammonia equipment.” And then there’s the wondrous federal crime of disturbing mud in a cave on federal land. (Be careful where you run to get out of the rain.) Whether or not these laws are frequently enforced, Husak’s concern is that they exist -- and potentially make felons of us all.

 

Part of the problem, Husak suggests, is the growing tendency of legislatures -- including Congress -- to toss in a criminal sanction at the end of countless bills on countless subjects. It’s as though making an offense criminal shows how much we care about it.

Well, maybe so. But making an offense criminal also means that the police will go armed to enforce it. Overcriminalization matters, Husak says, because the costs of facing criminal sanction are so high and because the criminal law can no longer sort out the law-abiding from the non-law-abiding. True enough. But it also matters because -- as the Garner case reminds us -- the police might kill you.

 

I don’t mean this as a criticism of cops, whose job after all is to carry out the legislative will. The criticism is of a political system that takes such bizarre delight in creating new crimes for the cops to enforce. It’s unlikely that the New York legislature, in creating the crime of selling untaxed cigarettes, imagined that anyone would die for violating it. But a wise legislator would give the matter some thought before creating a crime. Officials who fail to take into account the obvious fact that the laws they’re so eager to pass will be enforced at the point of a gun cannot fairly be described as public servants.

 

Husak suggests as one solution interpreting the Constitution to include a right not to be punished. This in turn would mean that before a legislature could criminalize a particular behavior, it would have to show a public interest significantly higher than for most forms of legislation.

 

He offers the example of a legislature that decides “to prohibit -- on pain of criminal liability -- the consumption of designated unhealthy foods such as doughnuts.”  The “rational basis test” usually applied by courts when statutes face constitutional challenge would be easily met. In short, under existing doctrine, the statute would be a permissible exercise of the police power. But if there existed a constitutional right not to be punished, the statute would have to face a higher level of judicial scrutiny, and might well be struck down -- not because of a right to eat unhealthy foods, but because of a right not to be criminally punished by the state except in matters of great importance.

 

Of course, activists on the right and the left tend to believe that all of their causes are of great importance. Whatever they want to ban or require, they seem unalterably persuaded that the use of state power is appropriate.

 

That’s too bad. Every new law requires enforcement; every act of enforcement includes the possibility of violence. There are many painful lessons to be drawn from the Garner tragedy, but one of them, sadly, is the same as the advice I give my students on the first day of classes: Don’t ever fight to make something illegal unless you’re willing to risk the lives of your fellow citizens to get your way.

1. Don’t laugh. When I was in high school, I visited a night court session in a small New Jersey town, and witnessed a defendant being fined for eating in public.

[Pelafina]

Fair enough. Totally a non-starter. We have to do what we can do that is effective.

 

I think the right angle of attack is the bullshit tax law that initiated the arrest. "This man died because he didn't pay a $5 tax." And when people point out the assault Eric Garner did that escalated the incident to the choke hold, point out that the assault would not have happened if there was not a tax on cigarettes.

 

This is actually great fodder for the "against me" argument to use with your friends and family. We will get nowhere with anyone claiming that cops should not have arrest powers because the state is bad in and of itself, but we can whittle away at support for law and tax proliferation.

 

I agree with what you said, and want to add that even if someone believes that the tax law is just, the method of handling a tax evader does not have to be physical in nature.  There are other non-violent ways to punish a person.

[Jamiroquai]

The choke hold didn't kill Garner, the constriction of his chest did. Also, what the video does not show is the alleged assault of a police officer in the minute before he was placed in the hold.

 

Don't get me wrong, it was wrong to kill Garner, especially over something so trivial as tax evasion. I hope the civil suit causes serious changes. The most serious change would be to get rid of laws that are so egregiously bad that it causes such levels of ire and disrespect that people will inevitably get into conflicts with police.

 

The state is capricious and unevenly applied in its torture of its chattel. That doesn't mean you should confront a cop on the street because it can get you killed.

 

Saying that the choke hold didn't kill Garner is a little misleading. The medical examiner specifically listed it as one of the contributing factors in his death, in conjunction with the constriction of his chest/heart problems and the fact that he was generally unhealthy. 

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you also seem to be implying that Garner showed disrespect and that he resisted arrest. I've seen the entire video a few times, and at no point does he actually resist in any way which would allow that type of force to be used.

 

If you watch the video again, you can see that Garner was arguing vocally with the cops, but when they actually approach him and put him into the choke hold, he doesn't actually resist, just backs away a bit. Once he actually is put into the choke hold, people have said that he resisted, but he actually acted the way most people do when they are being put into a choke hold. That's a natural reaction to having your passageway blocked and not being able to breathe. 

 

When I was in my teens I was placed in many, many choke holds (usually some drunk rough housing on the part of a caretaker) and trust me, your hands don't just drop to the side and go limp. I've only seen that happen if you're put in a sort of sleeper hold (though I've never actually seen a successful sleeper hold put on anybody).

 

It's one of the reasons you'll be hard-pressed to find any videos on YouTube or anywhere else where a person that's put into a similar type of choke hold does not act the way Garner did.

[shirgall]

Saying that the choke hold didn't kill Garner is a little misleading. The medical examiner specifically listed it as one of the contributing factors in his death, in conjunction with the constriction of his chest/heart problems and the fact that he was generally unhealthy. 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you also seem to be implying that Garner showed disrespect and that he resisted arrest. I've seen the entire video a few times, and at no point does he actually resist in any way which would allow that type of force to be used.

 

If you watch the video again, you can see that Garner was arguing vocally with the cops, but when they actually approach him and put him into the choke hold, he doesn't actually resist, just backs away a bit. Once he actually is put into the choke hold, people have said that he resisted, but he actually acted the way most people do when they are being put into a choke hold. That's a natural reaction to having your passageway blocked and not being able to breathe. 

 

When I was in my teens I was placed in many, many choke holds (usually some drunk rough housing on the part of a caretaker) and trust me, your hands don't just drop to the side and go limp. I've only seen that happen if you're put in a sort of sleeper hold (though I've never actually seen a successful sleeper hold put on anybody).

 

It's one of the reasons you'll be hard-pressed to find any videos on YouTube or anywhere else where a person that's put into a similar type of choke hold does not act the way Garner did.

 

Mechanical asphyxiation was what killed him. The choke hold may have contributed, but it was not the only factor. My understanding comes from my wife's evaluation of his speech (she's an emergency room nurse)... those haunting last words.

 

My understanding is that the assault happened before the video started. I wasn't there, so I am relying on questionable information.

 

Nowhere am I saying this was right... but it doesn't quite meet the requirements for criminal liability (that is, murder).

[jpahmad]

 

The death of Eric Garner is not an example of racial injustice. It’s a tragic consequence of a man who refused to take his grievance to a courtroom, where it could be sorted out without violence. He paid for that mistake with his life. That does not make him a martyr.

 

 

The death of Eric Garner shows, on video tape, someone with a badge who is  willing to kill another human being outside of self-defense.  This is obviously not the first example. 

 

Their are only two conclusions for people who kill outside of self-defense or defense of others:

 

1.  They are heartless sociopaths and should be ostracized.

2.  They are mindless robots with no capacity to think for themselves and therefore should not be given a gun and a badge

[cab21]

why would it not be involuntary/voluntary manslaughter to choke hold someone and kill them after the person has given up like the video of the death shows?

 

say the cop thought self defence, does it seem reasonable that he needed to continue the hold for so long?

 

did people think the man said "i can't breathe", yet continued to resist or be a threat?

[Lians]

A video on the topic is coming out shortly! :-)

[MMX2010]

why would it not be involuntary/voluntary manslaughter to choke hold someone and kill them after the person has given up like the video of the death shows?

 

 

In my opinion, (which may be wrong, because I'm no lawyer), is that there's no such thing as, "Well, he was resisting arresting.  But now he has given up." 

 

Instead, I think Garner resisted arrest the moment he said, "It stops here...".  And he doesn't actually stop resisting arrest until he's been put in cuffs. 

 

------------------------

 

As an aside, I'm still an anarchocapitalist.  But I find myself accepting that the police are comprised of non-questioning, militarized law-enforcement agents.  This agreement, strangely, makes me much more willing to take their side in cases like this.  Also, their constant experience with the worst of human society arguably made them disbelieve Garner when he said he couldn't breathe.  After all, how many times do suspects lie that "I can't breathe." and "You're hurting me!" - just to anger the cops? 

[Jamiroquai]

 

Mechanical asphyxiation was what killed him. The choke hold may have contributed, but it was not the only factor. My understanding comes from my wife's evaluation of his speech (she's an emergency room nurse)... those haunting last words.

 

My understanding is that the assault happened before the video started. I wasn't there, so I am relying on questionable information.

 

Nowhere am I saying this was right... but it doesn't quite meet the requirements for criminal liability (that is, murder).

 

Ah, ok I see what you're saying. I thought what you meant was that the choke hold was irrelevant.
 

In my opinion, (which may be wrong, because I'm no lawyer), is that there's no such thing as, "Well, he was resisting arresting.  But now he has given up." 

 

Instead, I think Garner resisted arrest the moment he said, "It stops here...".  And he doesn't actually stop resisting arrest until he's been put in cuffs. 

 

------------------------

 

As an aside, I'm still an anarchocapitalist.  But I find myself accepting that the police are comprised of non-questioning, militarized law-enforcement agents.  This agreement, strangely, makes me much more willing to take their side in cases like this.  Also, their constant experience with the worst of human society arguably made them disbelieve Garner when he said he couldn't breathe.  After all, how many times do suspects lie that "I can't breathe." and "You're hurting me!" - just to anger the cops? 

 

Where do you make the leap from an anarchocapitalist (and presumably a supporter of the NAP)  to siding with non-questioning, militarized law-enforcement agents? 

Eric Garner didn't initiate any sort of violence, whatsoever. The police officers, however, did initiate violence. They came to arrest and detain him against his will, and at the point of a gun (if it had escalated). I don't see how any fair viewing of the situation can have any an-caps siding with the cops on this, but I do understand that it's not a tough job, and they are human as well, and prone to mistakes.

The problem is that in order to wield this much power and force over regular citizens, we should expect police officers to be perfect. Obviously the more desirable solution is no state at all, but the transition to a stateless society is just a notch under impossible, in the "highly unlikely in at least the next 20 years" category. In the meantime, we should do everything possible to try and decrease the frequency of these tragedies.