New York - A New York City grand jury decision not to charge a white police officer who killed an unarmed black man with a chokehold sparked outrage and protests on Wednesday, and the US Justice Department said it would investigate the incident.
Eric Garner, a 43-year-old father of six, was accused of illegally selling cigarettes on July 17 when police officers tackled him and put him in a chokehold. Police said he had been resisting arrest. The city's medical examiner ruled the death a homicide.
The deadly encounter on Staten Island, New York City's smallest borough, was captured on video, which quickly spread over the Internet and fuelled debate about how US police use force, particularly against minorities.
It was the second grand jury in just over a week to decline to prosecute a white policeman in the death of an unarmed black man. The decision by grand jurors in Ferguson, Missouri, in the death of black teenager Michael Brown sparked a spasm of violence, with businesses burned and looted.
On Wednesday, about two dozen demonstrators lay down in Grand Central Terminal's main hall in Midtown Manhattan in a silent protest as the evening rush hour began. In Times Square, about 200 people gathered, chanting “No indictment is denial. We want a public trial.”
On Staten Island, near the site where Garner was apprehended, some demonstrators defiantly crushed cigarettes in front of reporters and passersby - a reference to the reason that police gave for approaching Garner in the first place.
The Justice Department said it would investigate the Garner case. It is already probing the circumstances of the Missouri shooting.
Legal experts say that while there is no explicit law against chokeholds, their use is prohibited by New York police policy. Any violation, however, would not necessarily constitute a crime, they said. The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the municipal police union, says the officers involved in the Garner incident acted within the scope of the law.
President Barack Obama, while not directly commenting on the case, said the grand jury decision spoke to “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.
“We are not going to let up until we see a strengthening of trust and strengthening of accountability that exists between our communities and our law enforcement,” he said.
The grand jury decision poses the biggest challenge yet for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who came into office in January promising to improve relations between black New Yorkers and the police department.
On Wednesday, he praised New York police commissioner Bill Bratton's efforts to bridge the divide. However, he also said he had warned his African-American son to take “special care in any encounters with police officers”.
The district attorney for Staten Island, Daniel Donovan, announced the grand jury's decision not to indict the police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, who placed Garner in a chokehold.
“It is never my intention to harm anyone and I feel very bad about the death of Mr. Garner,” Pantaleo said in a statement released by the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association union.
Pantaleo testified at the grand jury. It is rare for defendants to testify in such proceedings but prosecutors have discretion to decide which witnesses to call and can choose to put a police officer accused of misconduct on the stand.
Benjamin Carr, the stepfather of Garner, said he was distraught over the verdict. “The justice system didn't do what it was supposed to do,” he said at the site where Garner was apprehended by police and a makeshift memorial now stands.
Tempers flared at the site as about a dozen protesters expressed their anger at the grand jury's decision. Daniel Skelton, a black 40-year-old banker, spoke loudly as he voiced his outrage at the grand jury verdict. “A black man's life just don't matter in this country,” he said.
It is rare for either federal or state prosecutors to charge a US police officer for excessive force, even when a death results.
The US Supreme Court and lower courts have ruled over decades that police officers should have wide latitude to use violence to defend themselves and to take suspects into custody.
“There are a lot of cases where police officers don't get indicted for what looks like extreme situations,” said Aaron Mysliwiec, president of the New York State Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers. “Many jurors and judges tend to believe police officers more than your average witness.”
In ruling Garner's death a homicide, the city medical examiner said police officers killed him by compressing his neck and chest. His health problems, including asthma and obesity, were contributing factors, the medical examiner said.
The video of Garner's arrest shows him arguing with police officers, saying, “Please leave me alone”, and later, “Don't touch me”, before a group of four officers tackled him to the ground. He then began to plead with them, saying repeatedly, “I can't breathe”.
Shortly before the grand jury announcement, the New York City police launched a pilot programme to equip officers with body cameras. The video camera programme was ordered by a federal court judge who ruled last year that police had unfairly stopped and frisked black and Latino New Yorkers. It aims to make officers more careful and accountable about using force, De Blasio told reporters, while reducing complaints and lawsuits.
Reuters