Cops Have Ugly, Unsympathetic Reaction to NYPD Choking Victim

If their anonymous postings on police forums are
any indication, law enforcement officers are deeply unsympathetic
to Eric Garner, the 43-year-old man who was
choked to death by the New York Police Department last
week.

The death of Garner at the hands of the police—who approached
him for selling cigarettes, tackled him, and put him in a
chokehold that sent him into cardiac arrest and killed him—has
provoked an outcry from a city weary of seemingly incessant police
brutality. But as New York Magazine notes, many cops are
rationalizing the treatment of Garner in online postings.

Though anonymous, these reactions do belong to actual cops,
since participation at PoliceOne requires law enforcement
identification, according to
New York Magazine:

In internet communities for law enforcement, like PoliceOne.com, “the One
resource for Law Enforcement online,” and Thee Rant, an NYPD message board,
the Garner story has stirred up racial, political, and professional
tensions, most of them quite ugly. While all of the comments below
are anonymous, and therefore not verifiable, both sites
do require
registration for membership (“No ID card, No
Approval!”says
Thee Rant). By no means a comprehensive view of law-enforcement
feelings about the incident, the postings do provide a
different — if beyond upsetting — perspective.

Here is a sampling of the cop comments at
PoliceOne:

reltubs3314:

Anytime a person says “I’m tired of it. It stops today.” That
will almost always end with the use of force. He made that
decision, not the Police. The Police must effect the arrest and
rise above any resistance. That resistance or lack of resistance is
determined by the suspect. This was a huge man and it appears to me
they used minimal force. Sometimes people with pre-existing
conditions die when they exert themselves. There are Police
Officers that have heart attacks and die every year during physical
altercations with subjects. You will not see main stream media
featuring those in their headlines. This is nothing more than petty
blame shifting and fuel for extremist with an agenda. 

joe hoffman:

“This makes all cops look bad because, as far as the public
is concerned, this man was murdered because he sold some
cigarettes.”

In the first place, if it turns out that the force used by the
officers was legal and within departmental policy, it doesn’t make
ANY other cop look bad. If the public isn’t willing to accept the
fact that the officers did nothing wrong, they can go to hell. I
could care less how the public perceives us when we’re in the right
and if YOU were any kind of law enforcement professional, you would
understand that officer safety is FAR more important than public
perception.

SAPDMAS:

Again if Mr walking heart attack had simply put his hamburger
shovels behind his back, he wouldn’t have had a heartbattackmfor
over exerting himself. The NYPD did absolutely nothing wron. Tomthe
guys slamming these NYPD officekrs, I and many here wouldn’t want
any of you guys around us on a critical,incident. Hopefully you
guys are desk jockeys.

As former Reason editor Mike Riggs noted
on Twitter, “Go to any online forum that serves police officers,
find the Eric Garner story, and read the comments. Those are your
police, America.”

Online commenters are not necessarily representative of an
entire group of civil servants, of course. But the people who wrote
those things work in law enforcement somewhere—and they bring their
ugly perspective on police brutality with them to the job.