Eric Garner: "I can't breathe"

Eric Garner’s case is another prerequisite for the beginning of the BLM movement. Eric Garner was an African American 43-year-old father of six. He weighed 400 pounds and had various health problems.

On July 14, 2014 he suffocated in NYPD chokehold. He was familiar to the police for selling cigarettes illegally and this is exactly why he was murdered on this mid-July day. Being accused of selling untaxed tobacco products, he was approached and confronted by two policemen whose names could now be heard all around the States. One of them was Daniel Pantaleo.

Except for selling cigarettes, he also had driven without a license several times and had been accused for illegal marijuana possession.

Officer Pantaleo came up behind Eric and put his right arm below his. Garner began to fall and the officer’s arm was on Eric’s neck. He was then grabbed by three other police officers. He kept saying that couldn’t breathe. He repeated the words “I can’t breathe” eleven times. He lost consciousness and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead roughly an hour later.

Many bystanders captured the terrific scene on camera. The footage from different angles was then thoroughly analyzed in order to figure out, what had actually happened. The words became a rallying cry for a protest movement. The footage also went viral thanks to the technologies we have nowadays. Despite many witnesses of the scene, it still remains unclear, what happened on July, 14.

The maneuver the officer did was against NYPD rules. Since 1993 a chokehold Pantaleo used to subdue Garner had been banned. However, it did not effect the grand jury’s decision to not indict Officer Pantaleo. Nine out of ten black people were against of this decision. So were 52% of white people. The case was dropped on December 3 and large demonstrations sparked in New York city.

However, officer Pantaleo’s life has changed. Even though he remained in police for another 5 years after the trial, he eventually was fired by Mr. O’Neill. His pension benefits were also striped in 2019. However, other officers involved in the arrest were not dismissed.

Many of the details of Eric Garner’s death remain unclear. In our next post we are going to consider what Eric’s family went through during the trial and how their lives have changed.