The Pernicious Myth Of "If You Can Speak You Can Breathe"

If you watch the video again..................

[video=youtube;pvATEjsf41g]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvATEjsf41g[/video]

No one has anything around his neck when he says "I can't breathe". Had Eric garner simply turned around and been arrested, he would be alive today.

 

It is taught in the academy as a way to take down someone resisting since it causes temporary loss of blood flow to the brain. It is not deadly unless you did it until death which is not the case here.

 

Says the person who has never been in a rear-naked choke.

First of all, I'd like to point out that clearly you don't know the definition of choke:

choke: to stop the breath of by squeezing or obstructing the windpipe

There are actually two ways to apply a rear-naked choke... if you want to cut off the bloodflow (and air) you put the persons neck in the crease of your elbow. That will allow you to put pressure on both the arteries leading to the brain AND the windpipe. If you want to cut off breathing you use your forearm against the windpipe which is what the officer in this case did. If he was ACTUALLY choking him with the way that the choke was being applied (with the forearm) he would have cut off his air supply and he would not be able to talk.





Notice, it's the forearm not the crease at the elbow where the choke is being applied. If this type of choke was actually being applied it would cut off his air supply and he wouldn't be able to say "I can't breathe" 11 times.

He couldn't breathe because he was 400lbs, had medical issues and had 2 or 3 200lbs officers on top of him. It had little to nothing to do with the chokehold.

 

Silly dodge. Had he not had a criiminal record with numerous resisting arrest charges. It is likely that he would still be alive today. Please note given the condition of his heart, almost anything the cops did in the process of arresting him if he chose to resist arrest was likely to kill him. Tazer? 50k volts and a bad heart = DOA. Similarly pepper spray with his asthma condition would very likely have done him in given his heart condition and the slow response of the paramedics. The man is dead not because of what the cops did but because the paramedics were slow to arrive on the scene and then did not administer the appropriate treatments.

 

What you are describing is actually the effect of a society unconsciously conditioned with cognitive distortions.

TV did it from 1980 on with sitcoms, soaps, dramas, game shows and reality shows came in later once the conditioning became somewhat accepted.

 

I noticed this earlier looking at the video. If you look closely, as your picture shows, the officer isn't pressing his forearm against Garner's windpipe. I mean, I was never trained, but I know that if you're going to choke someone out you need to apply hard pressure directly against the windpipe, and that's usually the forearm. Other things could do that, but not the crevice that is the 'pit' of the elbow. And it's pretty clear the officer didn't start with a chokehold, though he seems to have slipped to it in the commotion, but he released it pretty quickly.

 

People who physically resist the police can and should be met with police force... whether they are jaywalking, innocently sitting on a bench or being stopped and questioned. I live in an area where police are extremely corrupt and abusive, hate the cops around here. But if you resist them, you get what you deserve and that's perfectly legal and warranted. The man was not violently subdued for "selling cigarettes," just more "gentle giantism" at play. The above quoted conflation is the exact same thing Clinton apologists do when they claim he was impeached for getting a BJ.

 

Obviously in this case is caused a permanent lack of blood flow to the brain.

It's 1st degree murder.

 

No it didn't. Stop speaking out of ignorance.

He died because of pressure to his chest causing him to not be able to breathe... like the medical examiner states. Not lack of blood flow to his brain.

 

Precisely correct, and it is an observation that anyone could freeze-frame and see but the Left doesn't want to do that and doesn't want to know because it fits their ideological bent to claim racism and deliberate murder where none actually exists. They have a political, race-based agenda, and they are carrying it out before the nation's eyes WITH the help of the Mainstream Media whoring for television ratings and with the help of this Dem Party administration.

 

Wrong again. It didn't or Garner would have passed away long before they took him away. He died later from complications due to his health.

 

Not necessarily.

 

Nice deflection. He didn't die of a choke hold, he died of an heart attack after he was removed from the scene.

 

That's the first I've heard of this. Source?

 

The autopsy report ruled it a homicide and said that the cause of death was compression to the neck.

 

The medical examiner does not make legal decisions. What you are talking about is the language they use during any autopsy. It also says more than just 'compression to the neck'. Just because the medical examiner uses the word homicide does not mean it is a crime.

 

The pictures provided in the forums PROVE there was no choke hold. Also if you were actually in a choke hold you couldnt talk and also couldnt say several times that you cant breath. The whole damned incident put forth by racist blacks like Sharpton it a TOTAL LIE!!!!!!!

 

http://time.com/3618279/eric-garner-chokehold-crime-staten-island-daniel-pantaleo/

On Aug. 1, a New York City medical examiner determined that the cause of death in the Garner case was “homicide,” specifically the neck compressions from the Pantaleo’s chokehold and “the compression of [Garner’s] chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police,” according to spokeswoman, Julie Bolcer.

 

That's not true. The ignorance of human biology and hand to hand combat techniques shown in this thread is astounding.

 

That link verifies what I already told you.

 

That is an absurd statement.

 

Yes...and yet at the same time a resounding no.

I would agree that the root cause of this entire incident is the stupidity of making the sale of individual cigarettes a crime. You need to look the state of New York squarely in the eye on this one. My parents recently moved to New York from the savage wilds of Ohio so I have been spending more time than I am entirely comfortable with in New York and the differences are staggering. In the city itself, their goal is to price the little vices in life out of affordability for most people. This philosophy of application of law directly resulted in the confrontation between the police (and a blatant choke hold that probably did start a chain reaction leading to death) and Mr. Garner.

With that said, what were the police supposed to do? They cannot simply walk away. The law may be stupid (it is) but until the people of New York band together and VOTE the authors and sponsors of such nanny state stupidity out of office and replace them with individuals who will repeal such laws, what are the officers supposed to do? Mr. Garner had been cited and fined and arrested multiple times before, mostly for the same crime.

You might argue that the proper response would be to issue yet another citation and move along. I would probably agree, having the hindsight knowledge of what the ultimate consequences of direct intervention would be.

The police had no idea of the health status of Mr. Garner at that time. All they knew was a large man was refusing to cease and desist and move along.

I think the video shows a clear choke hold that had been banned by the department as proper takedown technique. I think the officer who administered it should be reprimanded. The city and the police department should be legally liable if the choke hold can be shown to be a contributing factor in Mr. Garner's death.

I don't believe the police acted in racial hatred. I think they were acting to enforce a stupid law that should never have been on the books. I also don't believe the police have the luxury to pick and choose which laws they will enforce and which ones they will not, despite Mr. Eric Holder's actions to the contrary.

Laws like these are what the people of New York should be protesting against if they want to effect positive social change.

 

No the link says that it wasn't just the chokehold but compression on his chest while in a prone position was the cause.

You're trying to blame it on the chokehold and that wasn't the problem. The fact he was able to speak well enough to say I can't breathe 11 times is evidence that a chokehold was not ACTUALLY applied or if it was it wasn't enough to cause a problem. Therefore, the most relevant cause was the compression put on his chest.

 

The disabled gentleman was no threat. I think this is basically a case of little man syndrome. That whimpy little pig attacked that disabled gentleman from behind and killed him.

 

The police do what they are instructed to do. The City and State deem that these people must be arrested because they have not paid their fair share or regressive tax to the government coffers. The State can kill you with impunity if you protest their Statism.