You can only take to the streets in protest for so long before people start asking, 'what is it that you want exactly?'
And so it has gone with the rallies and marches in response to the non-indictment of Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo by a Staten Island grand jury called to consider charges against him in the July 17 chokehold death of Eric Garner.
Last year, eyewitnesses were certain that 16-year-old Kimani Gray was unarmed when two plainclothes officers shot him seven times in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. But the officers alleged that Gray pointed a .38-caliber Rohm's industry revolver at them.
Aggrieved family members demanded justice. Protests were held. Riots ensued. No one was indicted.
NEW YORK – Many Jews were among the thousands of people who marched in New York City streets Thursday night protesting the decision by a grand jury not to put a white police officer on trial for causing the death of an unarmed black man. More than two dozen demonstrators, including several leading rabbis, were arrested on the Upper West Side after they sat down in the middle of a major intersection in an act of civil disobedience
Following the chokehold death of Eric Garner at the hands of a New York Police Department officer, activists are demanding wide-reaching institutional changes to the way the department does business.
Garner, a 43-year-old black man, died on July 17 after a white police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, strangled him in an attempt to arrest him for selling untaxed cigarettes.
A day after a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, two of most powerful men in the state, said they are interested in passing major criminal justice reforms during next year's legislative session.
Update: The Staten Island grand jury voted not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for his role in Eric Garner's death this summer.
Mayor Bill de Blasio today touted crime statistics showing the last four months to be the safest on record since 1993, after reforms to policies like stop-and-frisk that his critics had argued would cause crime to climb.
“More black Americans and more Hispanic Americans are going to die,” said Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.
“It will end in buckets of blood on city streets,” wrote The New York Post’s Andrea Peyser.
In the aftermath of a traumatic summer of nonstop police brutality, LGBTQ youth -- from Ohio to Hong Kong, Staten Island to Ferguson -- are dreaming.
L-R: City Council Members Carlos Menchaca (Brooklyn - Sunset Park), Antonio Reynoso (Brooklyn -Bushwick & Williamsburg) and Ritchie Torres (Bronx) (Photo : Communities United for Police Reform)