The Garner Case -- Get the Widow on the Set

You know the boys in the newsroom

Got a running bet
Get the widow on the set
We need dirty laundry

Chuck Todd did just that on Meet the Press yesterday -- he spoke with the widow of Eric Garner, who didn't necessarily answer the question the way one might expect:

CHUCK TODD:
Your husband is now the face of bias in our law enforcement. How do you feel about that?

ESAW SNIPES-GARNER:
I feel that he was murdered unjustly. I don't even feel like it's a black and white thing, honestly, you know, in my opinion. I really don't feel like it's a black and white thing. I feel like it's just something that he continued to do and the police knew. You know, they knew. It wasn't like it was a shock. They knew. You know? They knew him by name. 

They harassed us. They said things to us. We would go shopping. You know? They, "Hi Cigarette Man. Hey Cigarette Man Wife." You know? Stuff like that. And I would just say, "Eric, just keep walking. Don't say anything. Don't respond. You know? Don't give them a reason to do anything to you. 

And he just felt like, "But baby, they keep harassing me." And I said, "Just ignore them, Eric." And he said, "But how much can I ignore them?" And I would say, "Just stay away from the block. You know? Just find something else to do." And he's like, "What else can I do? I keep getting sick." He tried working with the Parks Department. But he had asthma. You know? He had issues. You know? Heavy guy. And he was very lazy. You know? He didn't like to do anything. He wasn't used to it, so.

How to interpret that? In the widow's reading, Eric Garner was just a poor schlub who didn't have a lot of prospects, dealing with cops who were essentially bullying him. I think she's telling the truth and therein lies a problem. Police are tasked with protecting us from harm. It's difficult to see the threat that Eric Garner posed that day. Going all Lord of the Flies on a guy selling cigarettes is, at best, a disproportionate response.

There are other problems, though -- along with the Widow Garner, Todd had Al Sharpton on as well, who said the following:

First of all, to blame the victim, the insensitivity of that is striking. But it's also, when you look at the video, the difference between Ferguson and Staten Island, even though we're bringing them together for now, is the video. And if you see in the video a man taken down on the ground with police over him, and then you continue to choke him, and the chokehold is illegal, are you now saying at the worst-case scenario, if he had resisted arrest and clearly he did, but the penalty then is that you choke him to death? I mean, I think it's the most absurd premise that this person could have raised.

Are the two incidents the same, though? In the Ferguson case, an officer had to make a split second decision whether to use deadly force on a suspect who had already been violent. There's no evidence that Garner had been violent and he was dealing with multiple officers. To suggest that the only difference between the two events is that one was videotaped ignores a variety of other issues. But that's the point, right? We're all about the narrative these days. Personally, I'm significantly more troubled by what happened to Eric Garner than I am with what happened in Ferguson. It's in Sharpton's interest to conflate the two cases, but I don't think they are the same thing. One might also wonder why Sharpton is in the employ of NBC, but that's an issue for another post.