HARLEM — Most New York City voters believe police have no excuse for the way they acted during the arrest of Staten Island man Eric Garner, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
Only 24 percent of those polled said the actions by police, caught on camera wrestling with Garner while trying to arrest him, were understandable. Sixty-eight percent disagreed.
CARRYING SIGNS with messages like "Black Lives Matter" and "We Are Human," thousands of New York City residents and people from the surrounding area marched in Staten Island on August 23 to demand justice for Eric Garner and other victims of police brutality and violence.
The attitude of those on the march was summed up by Leah, who said, "We're tired of our young people being shot and killed for no reason other than racism. We're not savages or animals. We're not going to take this anymore. Every time a young man gets shot, we're going to come out."
Five thousand people are expected to attend the "We Will Not Go Back" march on Staten Island on Saturday to call for justice for Eric Garner, who died after being put in an illegal chokehold while being arrested by a New York City police officer.
Joining them will be Rev. Al Sharpton, former Gov. David Patterson, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and the families of both Eric Garner and Michael Brown, the teenager killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri earlier this month.
Justice Caravans will bring attendees from Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Brooklyn.
The march on Saturday, Aug. 23 is being organized by the National Action Network, 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, The United Federation of Teachers, and the NAACP. The march is endorsed by hundreds of organization, including the New York Civil Liberties Union and Communities United for Police Reform.
When a federal court found the New York Police Department’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy unconstitutional in August 2013, New Yorkers concerned about racial profiling let out a collective cheer. Over the year since, that cheer turned to a dissatisfied grumble, then a roar.
Responding to a Daily News report that found minorities were overwhelmingly targeted for quality-of-life summonses, the de Blasio administration defended the “broken windows” crimefighting tactic Monday — but said it should be used in a “respectful” way.
A spokesman for the mayor credited broken windows — which calls for aggressively enforcing quality-of-life offenses to prevent more serious ones — with driving down crime to historic lows.
NEW YORK—The death of Staten Island resident Eric Garner from an apparent chokehold during a police arrest has put police–community relations in the spotlight nationwide.
On Thursday the two sides met. Activists and city council members rallied outside City Hall, while the mayor, police commissioner, and community leaders met inside.
The activists are going after a policy they see as ultimately responsible for the death: broken windows policing, but the topic was largely sidestepped by the administration today. Clearly, it’s sensitive.
CITY HALL -- Staten Island officials and clergy joined Mayor Bill de Blasio, Police Commissioner William Bratton, activist the Rev. Al Sharpton and top city officials in the City Hall Blue Room on Thursday for a roundtable summit to talk about police and community relations in the wake of the death of Eric Garner in police custody.
De Blasio said that new training procedures being put in place by Bratton "will have a huge impact. It will help draw the police closer to the community, and the community closer to the police."
When it came to the mayor’s son and the “broken windows” theory, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton didn’t have much to say today.
The typically gregarious police chief declined to offer any extensive comment on Rev. Al Sharpton’s fiery charges at a round table hosted by Mayor Bill de Blasio this morning. Mr. Sharpton claimed that Dante de Blasio, who is half black, would have been the target of an NYPD chokehold if he weren’t the mayor’s son.