R.I.P. Eric Garner

If you were to punish a child for misbehaving, the child would not (at least for sometime) commit the act again. The child would, ideally, take the lesson in and remember that what he had done was wrong.

With that said, I think the parallel is being made abundantly clear that the United States Police Departments are being run by people seemingly more immature than children.

The Mike Brown case, which I have mentioned and talked about several times in this blog, has touched Americans who have been paying attention in a deep place. It's the kind of event that we won't soon forget.

However, despite all that, two days ago the officer responsible for the choking to death of Eric Garner were not indicted on the charges being pressed against them.

Of course, with all the recent attention to the Michael Brown case, police reform, and other racial issues, this is horrific. However, this is not the Michael Brown case. There is no shaky accounts, there is no disputing analyzations of the body, there is a video of the incident which is clear as day.

Warning: Mildly Graphic.

Let me make myself perfectly clear on this situation. There is absolutely no excuse for this sort of unnecessary violence. This man was unarmed and, although clearly upset, showed no threat for these officers, and this was clearly a situation of a twitchy officer.

Is this racial? I do not think that this was initially a matter of race, but the police profiled the situation based on the fact that Mr. Garner was black. It is a pure fact that African Americans have a inherently different lifestyle than white Americans do, and that disgusts me.

Jon Stewart spoke out on the issue, and there was none of Mr. Stewarts typical jests and laughs. He was furious.

This sort of atrocity is the reason that average citizens refuse to trust police officers like they did years and years ago. Police are suppose to be men of honor, modern day knights. Instead, we have citizens wondering if their police officers are "just doing their jobs" or are low-grade sociopaths who lack moral empathy.

I can only hope, for Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and all others who have been treated unjustly by this system, that we will apply the appropriate reform to move this forward.

That's all I have for today, I'll be back Monday with a new post.

"I honestly don't know what to say. If comedy is tragedy plus time, I need more fucking time. But I'd settle for less tragey." -Jon Stewart