Rep. Justin Amash Says Eric Garner Killing Was “Clearly Excessive Force.” He’s Right.

After a grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against
the police officer who placed Eric Garner in a chokehold, leading
to his death, Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) had this
to say on Twitter:

It’s worth hanging on that first word for just a
moment—”clearly.” It’s not just excessive force. It’s
clearly excessive force. The clarity of what happened to
Garner is important.

There’s no ambiguity about what happened at the critical moment:
Eric Garner, who was arguing with police but not behaving violently
or aggressively, briefly pulls his hand away when an officer grabs
it from behind. He is then placed in a chokehold grip and slammed
to the ground where he is kept in a chokehold as multiple officers
pin him down and press his head into the pavement.

Almost as soon as he’s on the ground, he begins to gasp, “I
can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” He says it over and
over. So far as we know, they were his last words.

At some point, after he is unceremoniously dumped onto a
stretcher and put into an ambulance, he dies.

We know all of this because we can see it, clearly, for
ourselves. It’s all captured on horrific video,
available online for everyone to
see.

We also know why Garner died. It was not a heart attack, as the
officers involved in the incident initially claimed. It was chest
compression and “prone positioning during physical restraint by
police”—a homicide,
according to the coroner.

The police takedown killed him: by placing him in a chokehold,
forcing him down, and pinning him to the ground, and continuing to
maintain the chokehold grip as Garner gasped for life.

That move—the chokehold that
sets up the takedown shown on the video—is prohibited under New
York Police Department guidelines. It was
forbidden by the department in 1983, except in cases where an
officer’s life is in danger, after multiple individuals were killed
by its use. In 1993, it was forbidden entirely.

Finally, we know why the officers were questioning Garner that
day. He was believed to be illegally selling loose
cigarettes—something he had been convicted of previously. He did
not have any on him when he died. 

To believe that what happened to Eric Garner is justifiable,
here’s what you have to be willing to accept: that a group of
police officers placed an unarmed man who was not threatening them
in a sustained chokehold, a chokehold that led directly to his
death, a chokehold move known to have killed people before and
which police have been expressly prohibited from using specifically
because it had led to the deaths of others, over nothing more than
the possibility that he might be selling illegal cigarettes on the
street. 

You don’t have to be a crusader or an activist, or someone who
is worried about a pattern of aggressive policing to be upset about
this case. You just have to watch the video and ask yourself
whether you’re willing to accept that what it shows was
okay. 

I don’t know what the grand jury saw or heard, or what they were
thinking when they reached the conclusion they did. But given the
plain evidence, it seems quite clear, as Amash says, that this was
excessive force on the part of the police. 

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Watch ReasonTV’s interview with Rep. Amash below.