Wolf: we can't ask Garner "because unfortunately not alive at present" but what about arrest record?

[Leopolds Ghost]

Racist ex-cop Tom Fuentes: "Well, that doesn't prove anything except that he was arrested 30 times previously and didn't die (!!!!!!!) so why did he resist arrest this time?? {and that's why he died}... What the police did was justified"

Stated yesterday evening. Why is this bubblehead Wolf Blitzer still on the air?

Why is this racist scumbag Tom Fuentes (who stated outright in response to Ferguson that he agreed that Mike Brown was "a demon") still on the air?

Oh, and more from racist scumbag Fuentes this morning: Garner was resisting arrest, and he agreed with Rep. King that he was lying about being unable to breathe (!!!!) because "as a cop, I know that if you can say you can't breathe, you can breathe."

I guess by that logic, they should dunk overweight black guys in a vat of water, like a witch, and if they float, then they are guilty, if they drown they are innocent!!!

Wolf is clearly ignorant of even the most basic principles of justice, such as prior record (seemingly mostly a litany of harassment for selling loose cigarettes at the request of racist local bodega owners -- the owner of the bodega he was standing in front of said he didn't regret what happened to Garner and that the police responded to is request) not prejudicing the rights of a suspect in police action or a trial, especially the rights of a victim who can't defend himself because he is deceased!!!

[marym625]

1. FFS!

What the fuck is wrong with these people?

And Mr. Garner had 3 arrests. He had 31 charges against him. Huge difference.

Shitcan them.

K&R

[Leopolds Ghost]

2. Probably for selling 31 cigarettes. n/t

[Leopolds Ghost]

3. Any thoughts on this? Especially Fuentes

[gollygee]

4. This is bullshit

"I can't breathe" is obviously "I''m having trouble breathing," and if he could breathe he wouldn't have suffocated. How many hoops do you have to jump through, how many cartwheels do you have to do, to justify something like this? They're working really hard.

If he had been able to breathe, he wouldn't have died. Obviously, he could not breathe. This makes me so angry!

[Leopolds Ghost]

5. It's about racial dog-whistling with guys like Rep. King and Fuentes.

The real message they're trying to send is "this guy was a skell and I don't have a problem with his kind of trash no longer cluttering up my streets." It's the same sort of ethical message they trumpet publicly when they say we shouldn't follow normal rules of engagement when going up against terrorists or assassinations of foreign leaders or US Citizens overseas "because ultimately the end result is the same... a scumbag got taken off the streets." But they won't say that publicly when it comes to they feel the same way about black "thugs" as Mike Huckabee described Mike Brown.

Actually with Fuentes, it's probably about defending the shield at all costs. I'm surprised ex-cops don't have the equivalent of a gang sign to show their loyalty to the blue. They're already claiming the hands-up gesture is an unacceptable gang sign indicating hostility to the cops...

no doubt they'll say it's no longer a sign of surrender, but a sign of resisting arrest (as they're arguing in the case of Garner -- he put his hands up, therefore he was uncooperative!)

[HereSince1628]

6. Yes, exactly. But riddle this...what does being a cop have to do with knowing

that talking requires anything about breathing?

To be accurate, talking involves exhaling, if you don't believe me just try talking while inhaling.

There is much hiding behind the statement "as a cop, I know that if you can say you can't breathe, you can breathe?

It's common for parsing/narrowing word meaning to be employed when trying to provide self a path on which escape accountability. We've even witnessed a democratic president do this, suggesting that fellatio isn't a form of sexual behavior.

One of the telling features of this pundit's sharing is it belies an admission that this bit of partially true cherry picked meaning is widely distributed and understood among cops...because in the speakers own words...being a cop means this tidbit has been inescapably shared with you.

How does that happen?

Well it happens when sitting around with other cops talking about when suspects are supposedly lying. Maybe it happens in police academy, maybe it happens in locker rooms, cruisers, and the favorite watering holes of the blue line.

And what is the take away for these guardians of public safety? It isn't a possibility that a person could mean I am having trouble breathing, it's that whatever distress the police are causing isn't interferring with breathing...which is a mistaken understanding that is potentially deadly.

In Milwaukee we had a black man die in a squad car because of an asthma attack brought on by the stress of an arrest. As that asthma attack worsened he gasped that he couldn't breathe. The officers ignored his distress.

This stupid meme, talking= breathing which appears to be widely promoted in police circles, is killing people.

[Leopolds Ghost]

7. As Rachel Maddow (?) noted last night about a mentally ill TX death row patient "malingering"

Rick Perry refuses to commute his sentence (like George W Bush before him) because the prosecutors think he is "mentally ill, but malingering" i.e. refusing to get better in order to justify not being executed, so they're defying a Supreme Court order in his case stating that he's schizophrenic and schizophrenic people can't be put to death.

Of course, TX being the state where they officially believe oil and groundwater percolates up from the earth's core and cannot be depleted, so they would naturally have funny ideas about mental illness.

So yeah, the message is "they're obviously faking it." And they cling to this even when the person died from the symptoms they assert didn't exist!

[HereSince1628]

8. Are you saying police just don't want to believe

that when someone says they can't breathe?

I'm not sure if that's the point...but I suppose that could be an alternative to police work from information they pick up from each other.

[Leopolds Ghost]

9. Not sure I follow what you are asking?

What I was getting at was that police are trained (in some cases due to hard experience with felons) to be callous and disregard medical excuses in general.

So they're trained to disregard protestations that a victim (as the case may be) is suffocating (or has his car broken down and is black in a white neighborhood, etc).

On the other hand, the EMTs who responded and failed to assist Eric Garner after cursorially checking for a pulse, failing to remove the cuffs and being told he can still breathe (we're supposed to believe he died on the ambulance) were fired from the hospital where they worked, BTW.

[Cha]

10. No, it wasn't justified.. Chokeholds are against the law. It was illegal assholes.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

11. Was he resisting arrest?

It seemed to me that the point at which things got out of hand was when the officers in front of him were backing him against a wall from which he couldn't escape and then the main shithead came up from behind and yanked him back in a chokehold, causing him to violently jerk backwards. The cops in front threw themselves at him as if the backwards movement was coming from Garner, not from the cop pulling back on him.

[Leopolds Ghost]

12. This all started with yahoos on the Internet making fun of that "don't tase me bro" guy...

Half the people out there probably contributed to the Garner takedown video because they thought it was amusing to see an out-of-shape, overweight black man get strangled while his hands were in the air.