‘Done the same thing’

“I tell people all the time, the incident that sparked all this with Michael Brown in Ferguson, I probably would have done the same thing. You know, that’s what started it. The deal with (Eric) Garner in New York. He was 300-something pounds. I had this argument with my own sister. How come Mr. Garner couldn’t have said, ‘Hey, y’all caught me selling illegal cigarettes on the street. You got me and put my hands behind my back, and let’s go to jail.’ He’d still be alive today.

“If somebody’s fighting and struggling with you and you’re trying to arrest them and you’re doing everything in your power to arrest them, and that person don’t want to go and they happen to die or get injured or get seriously hurt, I can’t see that as being my fault.”

Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed in August 2014 by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson, Missouri. Wilson was twice exonerated of criminal wrongdoing. Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, died in July 2014 after a white New York City officer, Daniel Pantaleo, put him in a chokehold. A grand jury decided to not indict Pantaleo.

McGee said he has had conversations with family and friends about the issue and sometimes they agree to disagree.