Obama’s message of hope and change is all but lost amid the chaos of Ferguson

The president is being pressed to take sides in a personal, political and structural tragedy in a divided nation

 

Patricia Williams The London Guardian

 

‘In many people’s minds, Obama is fixed as exclusively African American rather than ‘really’ American.’ Photograph: Rex Features

In 2008, the year that Barack Obama became president of the United States, the New York-based artist Carrie Mae Weems created a video installation in which Obama’s face melts from one thing to another: model citizen, communist infiltrator, immigrant, foreigner, friend, black Jesus, brown Hitler, American dream, chicken, monkey, zebra, joker, minstrel. As Weems’s voiceover describes it: "A reason to hope, a reason to change, a reason to reason …"

Of course, Obama has always been somewhat shape-shifting in his symbolism – it’s probably what got him elected to begin with. The "hope and change" that became his trademark was more than mere slogan; the very idea of a first black president became a mirror for whatever people wanted to see in him.

Now we come to a situation all too familiar in America with the death of Michael Brown at the hands of a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Obama is being pressed to take one of two sides in a layered personal, political, and structural tragedy for which carelessly drawn lines in the sand could not be more unhelpful. The last two weeks of anguish in Ferguson cap a difficult season for Obama. Already besieged by the situations in Ukraine, Iraq, Gaza, Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan, he has had to manoeuvre his way through attacks at home from every side. From Congressional Republicans threatening to sue him for trying to implement healthcare reform to the snarkily undermining comments of Hillary Clinton – this summer has been a season of confrontation. Is Obama too aggressive in his exercise of executive power? Or too chicken to invade? Is he passive on immigration? Too intemperate with Congress? Rarely has a president been so buffeted by such a variety of inconsistently projected personality traits.

According to a Pew Research Poll, 80% of African Americans think race is an important component of the discussion about Michael Brown’s shooting, while 47% of whites in America think race is getting too much attention. Two thirds of black Americans believe that the police response has been excessively forceful, but only a third of whites. And while 68% of Democrats believe race is an important consideration in this case, only 21% of Republicans do.

With a nation so divided, Obama wades into the debate not so much as president or as constitutional law professor or as chief executive of the Justice Department. In many people’s minds, he is fixed as exclusively African American rather than "really" American. That symbolism puts him in something of a no-win situation: anything he says or does will be heard as siding. While the crowds of protesters in Ferguson and other cities around the country are actually quite diverse, they have become singularly monolithic in many media representations. Except for the journalists who have been assaulted and a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor who was arrested, protesters have been portrayed as representing all African Americans everywhere – noisy "agitators" who make police and honest white citizens "fear for their lives" and who "reflect badly" on the greatness of our republic.

And as for Obama, his restraint becomes reconfigured as ineffectual, alien, and remote. A popular Twitter hashtag made the point poignantly: #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, where thousands of young men posted two very different possible photographic depictions of themselves: first, a carelessly taken selfie, perhaps frowning or showing a tattoo or wearing a hoodie, and then a second formal pose, as the upright citizen, the graduation picture in three-piece suit, the beloved mother’s child. The response captures the atmosphere of accusation and apprehension that surrounds every black person in the US, even the president.

Indeed, even the metaphors employed to prod Obama to "do something" resonate with oppositional connotations beyond his control. Consider just one expression, used to the point of cliche, that of "stepping up to the plate": this is a sports metaphor used in team play. I suppose, by some measure, separate teams might be the nicest way of putting it.

Republican v Democratic, anti-abortion v choice, Tea Party v traditional conservative, climate change denial v ecological activism, immigration reform v walls on the border, gun nuts v the world. American discourse is inflamed well before one gets around to racialising it all. The message of hope and change, which originated as a means of contrasting the Bush administration’s handling of nearly everything – Katrina, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Iraq! – is so out of context as to be quite long-forgotten.

Against the backdrop of Ferguson’s tumult, pundits of all political stripes have been urging the president to "get angry" and be "forceful". No less than Sean "P Diddy" Combs was quoted as saying: "Obama, for real, get on a plane. It’s serious." And Duke University professor Michael Eric Dyson urged him to use his "bully pulpit" to render justice. But how the president can use his "pulpit" without being seen as "bully" is precisely the challenge

 

From Andrew Sullivan (The Dish)

 

Journalist's Comments on Ferguson Disturbances 

 

 

With tensions in the St. Louis area remaining high following the shooting death of unarmed teen Michael Brown, Conor Friersdorf gapes at the now-famous photo of heavily armed police confronting a local protester:

[T]hose three officers are dressed and outfitted such that they could as easily be storming into an ISIS safe house in Iraq. Actually, they are on the streets of an American city, clad in combat gear, squaring off against a nonviolent protestor in a t-shirt and jeans with both of his hands raised over his head. It is easy to see how visuals like these could dissuade people from taking to the streets to assemble in protest of police shootings, as is their moral and Constitutional right.

A handful of protestors in Ferguson, Missouri have reportedly thrown rocks at police, a wholly unjustified act that ought to result in their arrest and prosecution, if the perpetrators can be identified. But in the image above, the camouflage pants and assault rifles are hardly there to protect against thrown rocks. If the police were dressed as civilians, but with helmets and shields, that would be more understandable. The other bit of necessary context: as mostly black protesters face these pseudo-military troopers to protest what they believe to be a civil rights violation, they’re staring at another police excess that disproportionately affects people like them.

Notably, the photographer, Whitney Curtis, was struck by a rubber bullet while covering the scene. Jay Caspian Kang decries the police response:

[A]s the images and stories from Ferguson, Missouri, joined the news churn, many who registered their thoughts via social media noted that what they were seeing – policemen with dogs and AR-15 assault rifles standing in a Stygian, blue-lit cloud of tear gas; crowds of protesters with their hands in the air, screaming “Hands up, don’t shoot”; members of the press being removed from the scene – did not look like America. The sentiment underlying the shock – that the United States should be better, that we have a Constitution that protects its citizens from violent excesses, that an unarmed young man ought to be able to live through an encounter with a police officer – seems almost precious, when one considers the country’s racial history. … But after last night’s militarized reaction to the protests in Ferguson, it’s worth considering whether the typical ending to the story, wherein the outrage of the community is met with silence on the part of the authorities, has changed for the worse.

Annie-Rose Strasser observes ominously that on Tuesday the FAA issued a no-fly zone over Ferguson “to provide a safe environment for law enforcement activities”:

To get more of a sense of what that means, ThinkProgress called the helicopter dispatcher at the St. Louis County Police Department. St. Louis, not Ferguson, has been “responsible for crowd control,” a Ferguson Police spokesperson said. According to the dispatcher, the department originally requested the no-fly zone – for certain flights; “the ceiling is only at 5,000 feet,” the dispatcher said, though the website actually lists 3,000 feet – for 24 hours. The department then asked the FAA to extend the ban on flying.

The reason? “It’s just for a no-fly zone because we have multiple helicopters maneuvering in the area and we were having some problems with news aircrafts flying around there,” the dispatcher, who would only identify himself by his first name, Chris, said. The effort to stop media from flying over the area to film is troubling, especially in light of reports that police have turned journalists away from the sites of the protests.

Melissa Byrne suggests the police bear some responsibility for the rioting:

They should have gathered people of faith and trauma specialists to listen to the community. They should have ordered pizzas and sodas to feed people into night as they aired their anger and grievances. They should have packed away all need to fight the community. They should have committed to an open and transparent process for justice. They should have not relied on creating the conditions for a riot to cover up for their history of problematic policing. Yes, it was wrong for people to commit property damage, but I am 100-percent confident that non-violent, non-aggressive policing would have prevented the outburst of rage.

Emily Badger examines the racial composition of the Ferguson Police Department:

The St. Louis suburb of Ferguson where the working-class, majority-black population has been clashing with law enforcement for the last three days has 53 commissioned police officers. According to the city’s police chief, three of them are black. These numbers matter not just for the terrible optics of white officers clutching tear gas canisters opposite black residents shouting back. They speak to a fundamental problem rooted deep in history and driving the perception of injustice in Ferguson today: This community isn’t represented in its own institutions of power.

Robert Tracinski, in a post regrettably titled “Why Ferguson Needs John Adams,” urges observers not to rush to conclusions:

We ought to know how much can be distorted, misrepresented, and misunderstood by seemingly official or sympathetic sources on all sides, how long it can take for accurate information to come out, and how equivocal the results can be, with the evidence so evenly balanced as to convince partisans on both sides that they are right. But when every new politically charged shooting comes along, we forget what we should have learned, and there we all go, back to making confident pronouncements about who we think did what, who is the villain, and what is the remedy. The cardinal sin here is the subordination of facts to a “narrative” adopted by activists and by the media. To adopt a narrative about how all police are racist or all police lie about shootings would be as unjust as to adopt a narrative about how all young black men are violent. Instead of insisting on our cherished narrative, we should be calling for the rule of law—which applies for everyone.

But John McWhorter contends that the narrative about racially biased policing is accurate:

I am the last person to jump in with overheated rhetoric that America is engaged in a “war against black men.” There is no evidence of anything so deliberate. However, when more temperately minded people say that black lives are valued less in the clinch than white ones, jump in I must, because it’s true.

A few weeks ago, white 18-year-old Steve Lohner could tote a gun around in Aurora, Colorado (where in 2012 James Holmes gunned 12 people to death and injured 70 others), practically taunting law enforcement to mess with him, in a quest to make a showy point about gun rights. Who among us can pretend that if a black kid was doing the same thing he wouldn’t be much more likely to wind up killed? Those inclined to pretend might note that meanwhile, black 22-year-old John Crawford was killed two weeks later for holding a toy gun at a Wal-Mart in Ohio. This kind of thing sits in black American minds and creates a sense of alienation.

Meanwhile, Landon Jones mulls over the shooting in light of St. Louis’ troubled racial history:

There is no large city in America more burdened by racial tension and mutual suspicion than St. Louis. The racial and economic problems that have beset America’s cities are particularly intense in my hometown. Despite the city’s large black population, the single black person I met during my childhood in the 1950s was my parents’ housekeeper, Willie Brown. She would arrive at our house once a week and go to the basement to change into her maid’s dress. St. Louis is the city that produced Miles Davis, Chuck Berry, and Josephine Baker. Yet when Michael Brown died, white and black residents quickly drew back to their default positions of mutual distrust: Black people took to the streets to express their anger, while white citizens expressed dismay at the chaos. There are echoes of this throughout the city’s history.

But Jelani Cobb emphasizes that such an event could happen anywhere:

Three weeks ago, Eric Garner died as the result of N.Y.P.D. officers placing him in a choke hold, a banned tactic, following a confrontation over selling loose cigarettes. His death echoed that of Renisha McBride, the nineteen-year-old who was killed when she knocked on a stranger’s door following a car accident, which in turn conjured memories of Jonathan Ferrell, who was shot ten times and killed by officers in North Carolina soon after the death, in Florida, of Jordan Davis, shot by a man who wanted him to turn down his music, which in turn paralleled the circumstances of Trayvon Martin’s demise. For those who have no choice but to remember these matters, those names have been inducted into a grim roll call that includes Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Amadou Diallo, and Eleanor Bumpurs. These are all distinct incidents that took place under particular circumstances in differing locales. Yet what happened on Staten Island and in Dearborn Heights, Charlotte, Jacksonville, and Sanford have culminated, again, in the specific timbre of familial grief, a familiar strain of outrage, and an accompanying body of commentary straining to find a novel angle to the recurring tragedy.

Author of ‘Broken Windows’ Policing Defends His Theory

By SAM ROBERTS NY TIMES 

In 1982, after another year of record lawlessness in New York City, two college professors advanced — or, more accurately, rekindled — a plausibly uncomplicated theory that would revolutionize law enforcement in the city: Maintaining public order also helps prevent crime.

"If a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken," Professors George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson wrote in The Atlantic.

Today, controversy over their metaphorical "broken windows" theory is reverberating again after Eric Garner, a Staten Island man, died of a chokehold last month while being taken into custody for illegally selling cigarettes.

Critics denounce the theory as neoconservative pablum resulting in overpolicing and mass incarceration for relatively minor offenses that disproportionately target poor, black and Hispanic people. Moreover, they say it was not derived from scientific evidence and its connection to the city’s drastic decline in major crime remains unproven.

Professor Wilson, who taught at Harvard and at the University of California at Los Angeles, died in 2012. His co-author, Professor Kelling, a 78-year-old former seminarian and probation officer, retired from Rutgers but remains a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research institute. He argues that their theory, as applied by Police Commissioners William J. Bratton and Raymond W. Kelly, and plunging crime rates are inextricably linked. He is now concerned, though, that the critics may hold sway.

"I worry about a turnabout, but it doesn’t have to do with Bill de Blasio," Professor Kelling said, referring to the mayor. "He has been a consistent supporter of the maintenance of order. He knows that order and crime rates are volatile issues socially and politically, but he comes under a lot of pressure from small groups that I would consider pretty radical."

But Alex Vitale, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, said that enlisting officers to pursue minor offenses is "too expensive and undermines public confidence in the police."

Steve Zeidman, director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at City University School of Law, said: "While broken windows doesn’t lead inexorably to a homicide like Eric Garner’s, the more you turn loose 35,000 officers with the mandate to restore order, the more you increase the chances for something to go horribly wrong.

"Can someone argue that ‘restoration of order’ is at least partially responsible for the drop in reported crime?" Professor Zeidman said. "Sure, but the police commissioner acts like it is a causal relationship that has been proven and is irrefutable."

In the 1982 article, which drew on writings by the urbanologists Jane Jacobs and Nathan Glazer, Professors Kelling and Wilson acknowledged that shifting police officers from patrol cars to foot patrol in Newark during the mid-1970s had not reduced recorded crime. But they concluded that the strategy had made neighborhoods safer and vastly improved relations between the police and the community.

"It started as an observation, but since then there’s been science," Professor Kelling said in an interview, citing studies by criminologists in the Netherlands and Lowell, Mass. "The burden’s on the other side to say there is no link between disorderly conditions and serious crime."

The theory also has been buttressed by one incidental measure. According to the Census Bureau’s latest American Housing Survey, the number of broken windows in the millions of homes and apartments in the New York metropolitan area plunged during the last decade.

"Taking care of broken windows reduces crime; taking care of crime reduces broken windows," said Professor Kelling, who is now a consultant to the city’s Police Department.

He and his co-author were initially motivated by questions about the efficacy of routine policing: Could a culmination of individual offenses turn an entire community into a victim? Which threats to public order are priorities, and which are best dealt with by arrests?

"I’ve never been long on arrests as an outcome," Professor Kelling said.

But when Commissioner Bratton and the Transit Police concluded in the 1990s that arrests were the best way to end fare beating, he recalled, "We parked buses to book fare beaters on the spot and make the process as painless as possible."

Similarly, a clear warning followed by aggressive enforcement eliminated the squeegee menace in a matter of weeks, he recalled.

Referring to Mr. Garner’s death, Professor Kelling suggested that City Hall had to decide neighborhood by neighborhood if selling untaxed cigarettes was a compelling quality-of-life issue and, if so, whether arrest was the correct response.

"It seems to me that it depends," he said. "Is it serious enough to pass a law against? Is selling loosies disruptive to a community? What are the consequences for local businesses?"

The same goes for subway acrobats or homeless people who do not pose any imminent danger. "Social workers should accompany the cops," he said. "We shouldn’t be using our jails as mental hospitals or drug rehabilitation sites."

Stopping and frisking was "overused" during the previous administration, Professor Kelling said, a police tactic predicated on suspicion, in contrast to broken windows, which responds to minor offenses, and zero tolerance, which he described as "zealotry and no discretion — the opposite of what I tried to preach."

Restraint is also called for when teenagers merely look threatening but are not acting suspiciously or do not appear to be armed, he said, adding: "We don’t want to lose the genius of New York that is its diversity."

While he was aware of how loitering laws were used to contain and exploit blacks in the South, he said it was only logical that with black and Hispanic New Yorkers suffering the highest rates of victimization and fear of crime, targeting high-crime areas would produce a disproportionate share of black and Hispanic arrests.

"It’s not the police’s fault," he said. "It’s not whites that are terrorizing those neighborhoods; it’s African Americans."

And broken-windows policing produces another benefit beyond reducing crime, Professor Kelling added: "In an urbanized society, in a world of strangers, civility and orderliness is an end in itself."

The Death of Michael Brown

Racial History Behind the Ferguson Protests

By THE N Y Times Editorial Board

The F.B.I. may be able to answer the many questions surrounding the death of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black student from Ferguson, Mo., who was a few days from heading off to college when he was shot by a police officer on Saturday. The shooting of Mr. Brown, who was unarmed, led to three days of protest, some of it violent, and several tense confrontations between residents of the St. Louis suburban town of 21,000 and the police.

But it doesn’t take a federal investigation to understand the history of racial segregation, economic inequality and overbearing law enforcement that produced so much of the tension now evident on the streets. St. Louis has long been one of the nation’s most segregated metropolitan areas, and there remains a high wall between black residents — who overwhelmingly have lower incomes — and the white power structure that dominates City Councils and police departments like the ones in Ferguson.

Until the late 1940s, blacks weren’t allowed to live in most suburban St. Louis County towns, kept out by restrictive covenants that the Supreme Court prohibited in 1948. As whites began to flee the city for the county in the 1950s and ’60s, they used exclusionary zoning tactics — including large, single-family lot requirements that prohibited apartment buildings — to prevent blacks from moving in. Within the city, poverty and unrest grew.

By the 1970s, many blacks started leaving the City of St. Louis as well. Colin Gordon, a professor at the University of Iowa who has carefully mapped the metropolitan area’s residential history, said black families were attracted to older, inner-ring suburbs like Ferguson in the northern part of the county because they were built before restrictive zoning tactics and, therefore, allowed apartments.

As black families moved into Ferguson, the whites fled. In 1980, the town was 85 percent white and 14 percent black; by 2010, it was 29 percent white and 69 percent black. But blacks did not gain political power as their numbers grew. The mayor and the police chief are white, as are five of the six City Council members. The school board consists of six white members and one Hispanic. As Mr. Gordon explains, many black residents, lacking the wealth to buy property, move from apartment to apartment and have not put down political roots.

The disparity is most evident in the Ferguson Police Department, of which only three of 53 officers are black. The largely white force stops black residents far out of proportion to their population, according to statistics kept by the state attorney general. Blacks account for 86 percent of the traffic stops in the city, and 93 percent of the arrests after those stops. Similar problems exist around St. Louis County, where earlier this year the state chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. filed a federal civil rights complaint alleging widespread racial profiling by police departments.

The circumstances of Mr. Brown’s death are, inevitably, in dispute. Witnesses said he was walking home from a convenience store when stopped by an officer for walking in the middle of the street, and they accused the officer of shooting him multiple times when his hands were raised over his head. The police said Mr. Brown had hit the officer. State and federal investigators are trying to sort out the truth.

What is not in dispute is the sense of permanent grievance held by many residents and shared in segregated urban areas around the country. Though nothing excuses violence and looting, it is clear that local governments have not dispensed justice equally. The death of Mr. Brown is "heartbreaking," as President Obama said Tuesday, but it is also a reminder of a toxic racial legacy that still infects cities and suburbs across America.

 

 

Police confront unarmed man in Ferguson Missouri Monday evening  

 

 

 

This is a disgrace! It demeans the United States in so many ways! Police are no longer ex soldiers in simple uniforms with a night stick or a .38 but over dressed and over armed. Civilian police must never become militarized. This kind of behavior will lead to tragedy and all of us will suffer! David A Fairbanks

 

A Militarized Night in Ferguson

By Jay Caspian Kang The New Yorker

 

 

 

Last night, as the images and stories from Ferguson, Missouri, joined the news churn, many who registered their thoughts via social media noted that what they were seeing—policemen with dogs and AR-15 assault rifles standing in a Stygian, blue-lit cloud of tear gas; crowds of protesters with their hands in the air, screaming “Hands up, don’t shoot”; members of the press being removed from the scene—did not look like America. The sentiment underlying the shock—that the United States should be better, that we have a Constitution that protects its citizens from violent excesses, that an unarmed young man ought to be able to live through an encounter with a police officer—seems almost precious, when one considers the country’s racial history. The tragedy of the story of Michael Brown is that it’s not much different from the stories of the other men—young, unarmed, and black—who have been gunned down by the police. But after last night’s militarized reaction to the protests in Ferguson, it’s worth considering whether the typical ending to the story, wherein the outrage of the community is met with silence on the part of the authorities, has changed for the worse.

Writing in The Nation in the summer of 1966, James Baldwin described an instance of police brutality that had taken place two years earlier, several months before the death of an African-American teen-ager at the hands of the N.Y.P.D. sparked the Harlem race riots.

On April 17, 1964, in Harlem, New York City, a young salesman, father of two, left a customer’s apartment and went into the streets. There was a great commotion in the streets, which, especially since it was a spring day, involved many people, including running, frightened, little boys. They were running from the police. Other people, in windows, left their windows, in terror of the police because the police had their guns out, and were aiming the guns at the roofs. Then the salesman noticed that two of the policemen were beating up a kid: “So I spoke up and asked them, ‘why are you beating him like that?’ Police jump up and start swinging on me. He put the gun on me and said, ‘get over there.’ I said, ‘what for?’ ”

An unwise question. Three of the policemen beat up the salesman in the streets. Then they took the young salesman, whose hands had been handcuffed behind his back, along with four others, much younger than the salesman, who were handcuffed in the same way, to the police station. There: “About thirty-five I’d say came into the room, and started beating, punching us in the jaw, in the stomach, in the chest, beating us with a padded club—spit on us, call us niggers, dogs, animals—they call us dogs and animals when I don’t see why we are the dogs and animals the way they are beating us. Like they beat me they beat the other kids and the elderly fellow. They throw him almost through one of the radiators. I thought he was dead over there.”

If you take out the date, there is little in this passage that anchors it to any particular moment in the past century. The beatings could have happened as easily in 2014 or 1914 as in 1964. The only difference is that the police now are armed to the teeth.

In June, the American Civil Liberties Union (A.C.L.U.) released “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing,” a report that tracks how equipment donations made through the U.S. Department of Defense’s Excess Property Program, along with grants from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, funnel money and matériel—including firearms, explosives, tactical vests, and vehicles—to state and local law enforcement. (A report in the Times noted that the Pentagon has also distributed silencers.) Between 2011 and 2012, sixty-three agencies polled by the A.C.L.U. reported that they had received “a total of 15,054 items of battle uniforms or personal protective equipment”; some five hundred agencies had received “vehicles built to withstand armor-piercing roadside bombs.” In many instances, the receipt of these military-grade weapons is contingent on their use within a calendar year. “If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” Kara Dansky, one of the authors of the A.C.L.U.’s report, told me. “When the police have these weapons, they’re more likely to use them.”

Nationwide, fifty-four per cent of the people who find themselves at the other end of these weapons are black or Latino. For many in this country, the scene from Baldwin’s essay has become so familiar that it now reads as unremarkable. But have we also become anesthetized to images of police in armored vehicles and full military gear? And has the proliferation of images on news and social-media sites made them seem any more normal? Anyone who stayed up late watching the police action in Missouri unfold saw things that did not seem, at least in theory, American. It’s long past time to ask what happens when we raise the threshold of what seems reasonable in a police deployment. If the next Ferguson looks no more militarized than the scene last night, will we excuse it?

PBA slams medical examiner’s report on Eric Garner's death: ‘It is not a chokehold’

PBA President Pat Lynch defends Officer Daniel Pantaleo on Tuesday after the medical examiner said it was a chokehold by the cop that led to the death of the Staten Island dad: 'I've never seen a document that was more political.'

BY Rocco Parascandola , Corky Siemaszko NY Daily News

Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch (left) at a press conference

The police officer who killed a Staten Island dad with a prohibited chokehold was just doing what he had been trained to do.

So claimed Pat Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, in strident and eyebrow-raising defense Tuesday of NYPD officers, during which he called the medical examiner’s conclusions about Eric Garner’s death "absolutely wrong."

"It is not a chokehold," Lynch insisted. "It was bringing a person to the ground the way we're trained to do to place him under arrest."

Lynch, who is not a doctor, also said the ME’s office was "mistaken" when it concluded after an autopsy that the 43-year-old Garner’s death was a homicide.

"I've never seen a document that was more political than that press release by the ME," Lynch said. "Chokehold. That’s not a medical term."

Lynch also ripped Mayor de Blasio for not backing the officers in this case. "The mayor needs to support New York City police officers unequivocally," he said.

De Blasio defended the ME, calling the office "the gold standard in this country for the work they do."

Lynch’s remarks appeared to be aimed at taking the heat off Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who was caught on a shocking cellphone video wrapping an arm around Garner’s neck and dragging him to the pavement.

"I can’t breathe!" Garner could be heard yelling. "I can’t breathe!"

That video sparked nationwide outrage and Pantaleo was yanked off the street as the Staten Island prosecutor launched an investigation. Pantaleo has not been charged with a crime.

Lynch said Garner had been stopped a week earlier by police officers for peddling unlicensed cigarettes on the street.

"He was warned to stop the illegal sale and was not placed under arrest but was warned, admonished and sent on his way," Lynch said.

So Garner knew he was in big trouble when cops caught him selling loosies again, the union president said.

"But the next week he said he wasn't going to be arrested," Lynch said.

Flanked by Sergeants Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins, Lynch decried the "insulting and unjustified manner in which police officers are being portrayed by politicians, race baiters, pundits and even our elected officials."

In particular, Lynch singled out the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has been calling for a federal investigation.

NYPD Disputes Chokehold Charge, Defends Officer

The New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association is disputing a medical examiner's ruling that Eric Garner's death last month was a homicide caused by a...

"It is outrageously insulting to all police officers to say that we go out on our streets to choke all people of color as Al Sharpton stated while seated at the table right next to our mayor at City Hall," said Lynch.

Sharpton dismissed Lynch’s broadside as "childish."

"We have called for a fair and impartial federal investigation to provide the public and the Garner family with results," he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Ramsey Orta — the petty criminal who made the tell-tale video — is now in jail awaiting trial on a gun possession charge. He claims the arrest was a set up by vengeful cops.

Difficult Decisions Ahead in Responding to Police Chokehold Homicide

By J. DAVID GOODMAN NY TIMES

For two weeks after the death of a Staten Island man in police custody, frustration simmered as the city awaited the results of the autopsy. The mayor offered sympathy. The police promised better training. But now, with the medical examiner’s conclusion that the death was a homicide, by chokehold and chest compression, the investigation — and most significantly, the question of whether to prosecute any police officers — rests in the hands of the Staten Island district attorney’s office.

It is a decision fraught with legal and political complications, all the more so because Staten Island is home to many police officers and, more than any other borough, is seen as sympathetic to law enforcement.

Indeed, even as the district attorney, Daniel M. Donovan Jr., continues to investigate the police officers’ actions in the death of the man, Eric Garner, the Rev. Al Sharpton has called for a Justice Department investigation and went to Washington on Monday to urge federal action.

The two largest police unions, which have vocally defended the officers who were trying to arrest Mr. Garner, planned a news conference for Tuesday morning to lash out at "police haters." On Tuesday afternoon, the new chairman of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, Richard D. Emery, is holding an unusual special meeting to address, among other topics, his investigation into hundreds of chokehold complaints against officers in recent years.

　

In February 2010, federal prosecutors announced that they had insufficient evidence to try the officers on civil rights charges.

But the fate of the officers involved will be in the hands of prosecutors, and as in previous cases in which police brutality was alleged, from Rodney King in Los Angeles to Abner Louima in New York, where and how a case is brought can prove as important as what the ultimate charges are.

Joel Berger, a civil rights lawyer who worked for the city’s Law Department, said that the criminal justice system was often ill suited to handle allegations of police misconduct. That can be particularly true in places like Staten Island, where support for the police is so strong. "There’s always the possibility, Staten Island being Staten Island, that they won’t indict," Mr. Berger said.

Mr. Garner died last month after being subdued by officers who were trying to arrest him because they suspected him of peddling untaxed cigarettes. During a struggle, an officer put his arm around Mr. Garner’s neck in what the police commissioner has said appeared to be a chokehold, a tactic banned by the Police Department. The encounter was recorded on video by bystanders, and Mr. Garner, after being taken down, can be heard repeatedly saying that he cannot breathe.

The officer, Daniel Pantaleo, has had to surrender his badge and gun while the incident is under investigation, and the actions of other officers and of emergency medical workers are under scrutiny as well. A spokesman for the district attorney declined to disclose whether prosecutors had presented the matter to a grand jury.

Legal experts, civil rights lawyers and former prosecutors said there was little chance that Officer Pantaleo or the other officers would be indicted on a charge of murder. But they said a lesser homicide charge, like second-degree manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide, could be possible.

For federal prosecutors to step in, they must find evidence that the officers acted with the intent to deprive Mr. Garner of his civil rights based on his race, which can be a higher standard.

"When you are trying to figure out where you draw the line between a reasonable use of force and an unreasonable use of force that violates federal criminal law, that’s a bigger gap than words would suggest," said Alan Vinegrad, the lead prosecutor in the Louima case. In New York, federal authorities often wait for state officials to complete their case; proceeding in that order creates fewer legal hurdles.

There is also the possibility, former prosecutors said, that the district attorney could find that the officers acted negligently but did not do so in a criminal manner that could support prosecution. In that event, the case would not be presented to a grand jury at all.

That result would most likely set off further protests. "My hope, and the hope of the community, is that the D.A. pursue this and get an indictment and a conviction," said Deborah Rose, who represents northern Staten Island on the City Council.

Police officers are given broad latitude to use force based on their professional judgment. An element of any case is likely to be whether their response to Mr. Garner — a 350-pound man who refused to be arrested — appeared reasonable. "The real key to the criminal prosecution is the violation of the Police Department rule against chokeholds," said Jason Leventhal, a former assistant district attorney in Staten Island who now brings civil rights cases against the department. For more than 20 years, the Police Department has banned chokeholds, though they are not prohibited by state law.

The video, recorded by a bystander along Bay Street in a crime-prone corner of Staten Island, presents some of the clearest evidence in the case; both Mayor Bill de Blasio and the police commissioner, William J. Bratton, said it appeared to show a chokehold.

But the arrest on gun charges on Saturday of the bystander who recorded it, Ramsey Orta, could add a further complication: In his two separate cases, Mr. Orta will be both a witness and a defendant before Staten Island prosecutors. "Those who say the D.A. may be conflicted may be right here," said Michael Meyers, head of the New York Civil Rights Coalition.

Mr. Leventhal said jury pools in the borough often included many people with relatives in law enforcement and would probably present added challenges in the Garner case. "It’s a very pro-police community that is going to give the benefit of the doubt to police officers," he said.

In April 1994, a Staten Island man accused of dealing drugs, Ernest Sayon, died in police custody and the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, including "by compression of the chest and neck." A chokehold was never proven and a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict.

In the case of Mr. Sayon, federal authorities looked into his death, but Zachary W. Carter, then United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, which covers Staten Island, declined to bring a case. (Mr. Carter, who is now the city’s top lawyer, won federal criminal convictions against the police officers accused of beating and sodomizing Mr. Louima in a precinct bathroom.)

The Sayon case came only months into Mr. Bratton’s first tenure as commissioner. Then, as now, he responded with calls for increased training of officers.

For those pushing for federal prosecution of the officers who arrested Mr. Garner, the death of Anthony Baez in 1994 provides the most similar facts, and starkest example of state-versus-federal prosecution. Officer Francis X. Livoti was accused of using a chokehold while arresting Mr. Baez after he hit a police cruiser with a football in the Bronx. Officer Livoti was acquitted during a bench trial in state court, but later convicted of federal civil rights violations, and sentenced to a seven-and-a-half-year term.

Notable Cases Involving Police Brutality Complaints

Ernest Sayon

April 29, 1994

Mr. Sayon, 22, died after a drug raid on Staten Island. The police said he struck his head on a cobblestone street, but his death was ruled a homicide by asphyxiation. He was handcuffed at the time.

STATE PROSECUTION

After deliberating for seven months, a state grand jury declined to indict three officers.

FEDERAL PROSECUTION

Federal prosecutors reviewed the case but took no action.

Abner Louima

Aug. 9, 1997

An officer sodomized Mr. Louima, a Haitian immigrant, with a broomstick in the 70th Precinct house after he was arrested in a clash between police and patrons of a Flatbush nightclub.

STATE PROSECUTION

Four officers were indicted on assault charges, and two had additional charges of sexual abuse.

FEDERAL PROSECUTION

The U.S. attorney formally took over the case in 1998, before state trials. Officer Justin A. Volpe was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Another officer pleaded guilty in 2002 to perjury. Two other officers had convictions overturned on appeal. Two officers were sentenced to probation for a cover-up.

Amadou Diallo

Feb. 4, 1999

Four officers approached Mr. Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea, on the stoop of his building, killing him in a hail of 41 bullets on the mistaken notion that he was carrying a gun.

STATE PROSECUTION

In February, 2000, all four officers were acquitted by a jury after a trial in state court.

FEDERAL PROSECUTION

A year later, the U.S. attorney decided not to press civil rights charges against the officers.

Sean Bell

Nov. 25, 2006

Five detectives fired 50 times into a car occupied by Mr. Bell and two others after a confrontation outside a Queens club on Mr. Bell's wedding day. He was killed.

STATE PROSECUTION

Three detectives were brought to trial, and a Queens judge acquitted them of all charges in 2008 after a heated seven-week trial.

Staten Island Man Died From Chokehold During Arrest, Autopsy Finds

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN and MARC SANTORA NY TIMES

　

The New York City medical examiner announced on Friday that a Staten Island man died from a chokehold and the compression of his chest by police officers as they arrested him last month for allegedly peddling untaxed cigarettes.

An autopsy found that the manner of death for Eric Garner, 43, was homicide, the medical examiner said in a statement. While the report found that Mr. Garner’s poor health was a contributing factor, it was not the primary cause of his death.

The statement did not include details about any injuries to Mr. Garner’s body discovered during the autopsy. And it did not provide any information about how the medical examiner’s office reached its conclusions.

The New York Police Department has banned, for more than two decades, the use of chokeholds, which it defines broadly to include any police maneuver that puts "any pressure to the throat or windpipe, which may prevent or hinder breathing or reduce intake of air."

The encounter on Staten Island prompted Police Commissioner William J. Bratton to call for a complete review of the department’s training and tactics regarding use of force. It has also presented Mayor Bill de Blasio with a difficult challenge as he tries to balance his support of the police with his campaign promises to reform what he had characterized as over-aggressive tactics.

"We all have a responsibility to work together to heal the wounds from decades of mistrust and create a culture where the Police Department and the communities they protect respect each other," Mr. de Blasio said in a statement after the autopsy results were revealed.

Patrick J. Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, which represents rank-and-file officers, said that had Mr. Garner "not resisted the lawful order of the police officers placing him under arrest, this tragedy would not have occurred."

In declaring the manner of death a homicide, the medical examiner’s office is not suggesting a crime was committed, but is stating its conclusion that Mr. Garner died at the hands of another person or persons.

But the findings about the chokehold and chest compression are a significant development in the criminal investigation into the officers’ conduct. That investigation, by the Staten Island district attorney’s office, is still in its early stages. The officer who placed Mr. Garner in the chokehold, Daniel Pantaleo, has been stripped of his gun and badge.

When a video of the July 17 encounter between Mr. Garner and the police was made public, it prompted an outcry online, rallies organized by Mr. Garner’s supporters and a discussion on police-community relations at City Hall.

Captured by a bystander on a cellphone, the video shows Mr. Garner arguing with officers, who accused him of selling cigarettes on a Staten Island street corner. Mr. Garner says they are harassing him. When one officer seeks to pull Mr. Garner’s hands behind him so they can be handcuffed, Mr. Garner pulls free. The officer then wraps his arm around Mr. Garner’s neck and drags him to the ground, continuing to hold him in what city officials later acknowledged appears to be a chokehold.

　

Swarmed by officers, Mr. Garner can be heard repeating, "I can’t breathe." Those words have become a rallying cry both for his family and for supporters who see his case as emblematic of more systemic problems in the Police Department and the way it deals with people in minority communities.

Mr. Garner was a large man, weighing over 300 pounds, and had other health issues, including diabetes, sleep apnea and asthma. Some of those ailments were cited in the autopsy as contributing conditions to his death.

　

But the medical examiner’s office was clear in the cause of his death, finding he died from "compression of neck (choke hold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police."

Michael Baden, who was the city’s chief medical examiner in 1979 and 1980 and later the chief forensic pathologist for the State Police, said the autopsy results suggested that it was the chokehold in combination with the pressure officers applied to Mr. Garner’s back that proved lethal. "Obese people especially, lying face down, prone, are unable to breathe when enough pressure is put on their back," he said. "The pressure prevents the diaphragm from going up and down, and he can’t inhale and exhale."

The episode has raised questions about the "broken windows" style of policing, where officers target quality-of-life crimes. Mr. Bratton put that strategy into effect in New York City in his first tour as commissioner in the 1990s. It was widely credited with helping reduce crime. But the question he now faces is whether it is still compatible in a city far safer than the one he first encount

Trio charged with stealing millions from Miami-Dade Aviation

Charles Rabin Miami Herald

A couple and their co-worker siphoned more than $2 million from Aviation Department and used it to pay off car loans, mortgages and a $546,008 credit card bill, law enforcement officials say.
 

For more than two years, managers of a small company that operated an exclusive lounge for airline passengers siphoned millions of dollars intended for Miami-Dade’s Aviation Department through "shadow" bank accounts, law enforcement leaders said Thursday.

Their suspected haul: likely well over $2.19 million.

That’s the amount Miami-Dade Aviation, Miami-Dade police and state attorney investigators were able to identify as missing over a two-year period from January 2012 through February 2014.

State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said the "thievery" likely was going on longer.

"But we wanted to stop the bleeding now," she said Thursday while announcing the arrest of three people.

Elena Iglesias, 45, an account manager and 20-year employee with International Airport Management Inc., was identified as the ringleader of a trio that included her husband, Lazaro Iglesias, 47, and her co-worker, Malena Rodriguez.

All three were charged with organized fraud, grand theft and two counts of money laundering. Their bonds were set at $1 million each, and before posting bond they must prove the money they put up did not come from stolen airport revenue.

Since 1999, IAMI has contracted with Miami-Dade Aviation to operate Club America — an invitation-only waiting area at Miami International Airport that offers private work stations, Internet access, cable TV, showers and a complimentary full bar.

The arrest warrant claims that the Iglesias couple used the money to pay off a $546,008 American Express bill they ran up in two years.

Prosecutors say the money also was used for prepaid college accounts, and to pay off car loans and mortgages. Investigators identified $139,915 in a Bank of America account they said belongs to Rodriguez.

Fernandez Rundle said Elena Iglesias earned $52,000 a year as an account executive with IAMI and Rodriguez made $32,000. Airport officials said Lazaro Iglesias was an employee at the Miami airport until 1999, but were unable to determine exactly where he worked.

The trio remained in jail on Thursday and it was unknown whether they had retained attorneys. Miami-Dade County records show the Iglesiases live in a two-story, six- bedroom, six-bathroom, 6,870-square-foot home in Southwest Miami-Dade. The property was recently assessed at $1.4 million. Calls to the home went directly to voice mail.

The way the scam worked, according to prosecutors, was relatively simple: Airlines supply privileged passengers with vouchers to use at Club America. Passengers then would turn in those vouchers at the club entrance to IAMI, which would bill the airlines.

The airlines paid with company checks made out to IAMI, which was supposed to deposit those checks directly into an account belonging to Miami-Dade Aviation. But investigators found that for at least the past two years, the three were depositing about 20 percent of the total revenues received from airlines into personal accounts.

The investigation also found that the allegedly stolen money came from 11 airline carriers, including $1.1 million from Swiss International Airlines, $347,000 from Taca International Airlines and $279,000 from Virgin Atlantic Airlines.

Miami-Dade Police Det. Richard Wilkinson said the alleged theft was discovered two years ago when, during a surprise audit of IAMI, investigators found vouchers used to bill the airlines totaling $49,000 on the office floor at the airport. That prompted a full-out audit that led to the arrests.

"That number wasn’t in the books," Wilkinson said.

Miami-Dade Aviation said the lounge operator, owned by Ali Ghraouli, had only about seven employees, and three of them were wait staff. IAMI’s contract earns Ghraouli about $200,000 a year, according to Miami-Dade Aviation.

Ghraouli couldn’t be reached Thursday.

Operations of Club America were recently handed over to LAN Airlines.

Miami-Dade Aviation Director Emilio Gonzalez said he has had issues with IAMI’s month-to-month contract and has lobbied County Hall to change the terms or rebid the deal. He said that he has been rebuffed.

"These are egregious crimes," he said.