Update: This essay was posted before I learned of the three police officers killed in what is being described as an ambush in Baton Rouge today. My heart goes out to the officers and their families. If true, that this was a planned attack on the police in Baton Rouge, I greatly fear that our failure, by elected officials and society at large, to deal with our gun crazy culture and the militarization of law enforcement has unleashed a powder keg of violence this summer.

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Eric Garner was wrongfully killed by the police 2 years ago. His death was ruled a homicide by the New York Medical Examiner's Office resulting from "compression of the neck (chokehold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police." To date, none of the police officers or EMT personnel have been charged with his death. The only person who was convicted of a crime was the man who videotaped Eric Garner's death, Ramsey Orta.

The Department of Justice, which has been investigating Eric Garner's murder regarding bringing charges under Federal Civil Rights law, has done little if anything to date, allegedly due to differences in opinion between federal prosecutors in New York and Washington regarding whether the evidence, especially the video evidence justifies an indictment. You can read about further about his story and see an unedited version of the video shot by Mr. Ramsey at this link to NY Daily News:

[A] federal civil rights probe — a local investigation resulted in no indictments — remains stalled, beset, sources said, by infighting between New York and Washington factions of the U.S. Justice Department. "I feel like they're dragging their feet," said Garner's frustrated widow, Esaw. "The evidence is there. Either you're going to prosecute or you're not. They say, 'We don't want to leave any stones unturned.' How many stones are there after two years?" The evidence to which Esaw Garner referred is the cell phone camera video that captures her husband's verbal clash with cops, the shocking chokehold takedown and each of the 11 times he says "I can't breathe," while his face was pushed against the sidewalk.

My own thoughts about this tragedy, and the ongoing disproportionate killing of unarmed people for color by law enforcement, can be viewed at my YouTube Channel, Steven D Talks:

In 2015, over unarmed 100 black people were killed by the police, a rate five times greater than that of unarmed white people killed by law enforcement. A running list of people killed by the police in 2016 (as well as prior years)can be found at this website. Buzzfeed provides a timeline of Unarmed Black People Killed By Police from April 2014, to April 2015. And Gawker has a non-inclusive list of "Unarmed People of Color Killed by Police, 1999-2014."

And as we've seen this year the carnage continues, with little or nothing having been done at the local or federal level to stop these effectively government sanctioned murders of unarmed people of all races and ethnicities. That, in my mind is the true tragedy of the death of Eric Garner and everyone else who has been killed by the police, who for the most part escape any judicial penalty for murders that would be adjudicated as crimes if any one of us had committed them.

So, take a moment out of your day, forget the political maelstrom in which so many of us seem caught up to the exclusion of everything else, and, regardless of which candidate you support, take time for a moment of silence for Eric Garner and all the other victims of our increasingly militarized, "shoot first, ask questions later" law enforcement agencies.

And remember, it doesn't have to be this way, and it damn well shouldn't be this way.