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I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street
On July 17, 2014, a forty-three-year-old black man named Eric Garner died on a Staten Island sidewalk after a police officer put him in what has been described as an illegal chokehold during an arrest for selling bootleg cigarettes. The final moments of Garner's life were captured on video and seen by millions. His agonized last words, "I can't breathe," became a rallying cry for the nascent Black Lives Matter protest movement. A grand jury ultimately declined to indict the officer who wrestled Garner to the pavement.
Matt Taibbi's deeply reported retelling of these events liberates Eric Garner from the abstractions of newspaper accounts and lets us see the man in full—with all his flaws and contradictions intact. A husband and father with a complicated personal history, Garner was neither villain nor victim, but a fiercely proud individual determined to do the best he could for his family, bedeviled by bad luck, and ultimately subdued by forces beyond his control.
In America, no miscarriage of justice exists in isolation, of course, and in I Can't Breathe Taibbi also examines the conditions that made this tragedy possible. Featuring vivid vignettes of life on the street and inside our Kafkaesque court system, Taibbi's kaleidoscopic account illuminates issues around policing, mass incarceration, the underground economy, and racial disparity in law enforcement. No one emerges unsullied, from the conservative district attorney who half-heartedly prosecutes the case to the progressive mayor caught between the demands of outraged activists and the foot-dragging of recalcitrant police officials.
A masterly narrative of urban America and a scathing indictment of the perverse incentives built into our penal system, I Can't Breathe drills down into the particulars of one case to confront us with the human cost of our broken approach to dispensing criminal justice.
Matt Taibbi's deeply reported retelling of these events liberates Eric Garner from the abstractions of newspaper accounts and lets us see the man in full—with all his flaws and contradictions intact. A husband and father with a complicated personal history, Garner was neither villain nor victim, but a fiercely proud individual determined to do the best he could for his family, bedeviled by bad luck, and ultimately subdued by forces beyond his control.
In America, no miscarriage of justice exists in isolation, of course, and in I Can't Breathe Taibbi also examines the conditions that made this tragedy possible. Featuring vivid vignettes of life on the street and inside our Kafkaesque court system, Taibbi's kaleidoscopic account illuminates issues around policing, mass incarceration, the underground economy, and racial disparity in law enforcement. No one emerges unsullied, from the conservative district attorney who half-heartedly prosecutes the case to the progressive mayor caught between the demands of outraged activists and the foot-dragging of recalcitrant police officials.
A masterly narrative of urban America and a scathing indictment of the perverse incentives built into our penal system, I Can't Breathe drills down into the particulars of one case to confront us with the human cost of our broken approach to dispensing criminal justice.
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First published October 24, 2017
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February 3, 2018
A well constructed and compelling argument in defense of Eric Garner and other victims killed by police officers. I’m aware of misconduct and abusive behavior by the author in other publications, but there is none of that here. You get Eric’s story and a glimpse at some of the political decisions that lead to these fatal encounters. Eric’s daughter, Erica died at the age of 27 at the end of December last year. I hope this book helps her quest for justice.
A part of the problems is lies, damned lies, and statistics. To appear hard-working, if not efficient, NYPD worked to a quota. The number of stops, the number or summonses and the number of arrests. Police unions negotiate, “Twenty-and-one is what the union is backing up.” To meet the numbers, standards of “reasonable suspicion” were relaxed. The omnipresent lie about drugs visible on the center console of the suspects’ vehicle is a running joke. NYPD officer, Pedro Serrano tells stories that he and his fellow rookies exchanged. A policy known as Stop-and-Frisk was in use. Whole neighborhoods were pre-suspected. The form that officers use to document the reason for stops included checkboxes for inappropriate attire, furtive movement, and suspicious bulge. Law officers randomly stop and strip search people on the sidewalk. They had a term for it: “socially raping.” He, also, tells of bureaucratic imperatives designed to generate huge numbers of stops, searches, and seizures. While I would rather believe that he over-embellished his claims, the numbers produced by the NYPD following as part of the settlement to a 1999 lawsuit support them.
In a subsequent 2008 lawsuit, Floyd v. The city of New York, the city, ceased denying racial profiling and argued, that the numbers their policies had produced, proved black and brown people were more likely to be criminals. Officer Serrano’s tapes of his boss, deputy inspector of the Fortieth Precinct, Christopher McCormack, were played for Judge Shira Scheindlin.
Scheindlin concluded that the double standard was used to conceal a program of mass profiling. This a key passage of her ruling:
As Taibbi points out, those crime-ridden neighborhoods are crimes themselves. They were artificially created by criminal real estate practices. Resulting from predatory lenders clearing neighborhoods of longtime residents, driving down property values with scare tactics, buying the devalued property, reselling the neglected and run down properties at higher faked appraisal price ($17,000 for $15,000 home) to buyers with sub-prime shaky credit and low earnings, and dumping the loan to a secondary market. Rinse and repeat, each time the property is foreclosed upon. It’s comparable to practices that made a substantive contribution to the 2008 crash.
In every hand that the people living there play, the deck is stacked against them. I don’t believe that Brooklyn is unique in this regard. All these stops, seizures, summonses, warrants, beatings, chokings, shootings, and killings have a generous distribution. If there’s no video, the case “devolved into a battle of spin.” As if being less than perfect, invalidates your right to due process.
That 1999 lawsuit, Daniels v City of New York, was the result of the death of another unarmed black man, a Guinean immigrant, Amadou Diallo. He was shot forty-one times times by four plainclothes officers of NYPD's specialized squad Street Crime Unit (SCU) when he reached for his wallet.
The shooting death of Carnell Russ on 31 May 1971 in Star City Arkansas is especially stunning. His fatal mistake was asking for a receipt after paying a fine in the courthouse in front of two other officers.
Victor White III died in the back seat of a Louisiana police cruiser, 3 March 2014. His hands were cuffed behind his back. The Louisiana State Police say he shot himself in the back. Iberia Parish coroner’s report says the bullet entered his right chest and exited his left armpit without the stippling a close-range shot may produce. He had abrasions on his face. “Dr. Carl Ditch ruled that White shot himself, and declared his death a suicide.” (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investig...)
Dejuan Guillory shot four times while lying face down on the ground with hands behind his back, 6 July 2017. He and his girlfriend, Sequence Brown were out riding his four-wheeler. Ms. Brown was arrested and charged with attempted murder after she jumped on the officer, bit him and tried to grab his gun. (https://www.theroot.com/dejuan-guillo...)
The list keeps growing. I’ve noticed that fatal police shootings generate less uproar lately, maybe we’re inured.
A part of the problems is lies, damned lies, and statistics. To appear hard-working, if not efficient, NYPD worked to a quota. The number of stops, the number or summonses and the number of arrests. Police unions negotiate, “Twenty-and-one is what the union is backing up.” To meet the numbers, standards of “reasonable suspicion” were relaxed. The omnipresent lie about drugs visible on the center console of the suspects’ vehicle is a running joke. NYPD officer, Pedro Serrano tells stories that he and his fellow rookies exchanged. A policy known as Stop-and-Frisk was in use. Whole neighborhoods were pre-suspected. The form that officers use to document the reason for stops included checkboxes for inappropriate attire, furtive movement, and suspicious bulge. Law officers randomly stop and strip search people on the sidewalk. They had a term for it: “socially raping.” He, also, tells of bureaucratic imperatives designed to generate huge numbers of stops, searches, and seizures. While I would rather believe that he over-embellished his claims, the numbers produced by the NYPD following as part of the settlement to a 1999 lawsuit support them.
In 2002, before the deal, the NYPD had stopped 97,296 people. In 2003, that number jumped to 160,851. By 2004, it was 313,523. Then, by 2007, the city was stopping almost half a million people every year. In each of these years, blacks and Latinos made up well over 80 percent of the stops, despite being less than 50 percent of the population.
In a subsequent 2008 lawsuit, Floyd v. The city of New York, the city, ceased denying racial profiling and argued, that the numbers their policies had produced, proved black and brown people were more likely to be criminals. Officer Serrano’s tapes of his boss, deputy inspector of the Fortieth Precinct, Christopher McCormack, were played for Judge Shira Scheindlin.
McCormack not only told Serrano that “male blacks, fourteen to twenty, twenty-one” were “the right people” to stop, but that people who didn’t fit this description, even if they might technically be breaking the law, were the wrong people.
Scheindlin concluded that the double standard was used to conceal a program of mass profiling. This a key passage of her ruling:
The NYPD maintains two different policies related to racial profiling in the practice of stop and frisk: a written policy that prohibits racial profiling and requires reasonable suspicion for a stop—and another, unwritten policy that encourages officers to focus their reasonable-suspicion-based stops on “the right people, the right time, the right location.
As Taibbi points out, those crime-ridden neighborhoods are crimes themselves. They were artificially created by criminal real estate practices. Resulting from predatory lenders clearing neighborhoods of longtime residents, driving down property values with scare tactics, buying the devalued property, reselling the neglected and run down properties at higher faked appraisal price ($17,000 for $15,000 home) to buyers with sub-prime shaky credit and low earnings, and dumping the loan to a secondary market. Rinse and repeat, each time the property is foreclosed upon. It’s comparable to practices that made a substantive contribution to the 2008 crash.
There was no direct bribery element in 2008, but everything else was more or less exactly the same: wholesale falsification of financial records, the aggressive effort to get people with poor credit histories into homes, falsified employment data inflated appraisals, etc.
In every hand that the people living there play, the deck is stacked against them. I don’t believe that Brooklyn is unique in this regard. All these stops, seizures, summonses, warrants, beatings, chokings, shootings, and killings have a generous distribution. If there’s no video, the case “devolved into a battle of spin.” As if being less than perfect, invalidates your right to due process.
That 1999 lawsuit, Daniels v City of New York, was the result of the death of another unarmed black man, a Guinean immigrant, Amadou Diallo. He was shot forty-one times times by four plainclothes officers of NYPD's specialized squad Street Crime Unit (SCU) when he reached for his wallet.
The shooting death of Carnell Russ on 31 May 1971 in Star City Arkansas is especially stunning. His fatal mistake was asking for a receipt after paying a fine in the courthouse in front of two other officers.
Victor White III died in the back seat of a Louisiana police cruiser, 3 March 2014. His hands were cuffed behind his back. The Louisiana State Police say he shot himself in the back. Iberia Parish coroner’s report says the bullet entered his right chest and exited his left armpit without the stippling a close-range shot may produce. He had abrasions on his face. “Dr. Carl Ditch ruled that White shot himself, and declared his death a suicide.” (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investig...)
Dejuan Guillory shot four times while lying face down on the ground with hands behind his back, 6 July 2017. He and his girlfriend, Sequence Brown were out riding his four-wheeler. Ms. Brown was arrested and charged with attempted murder after she jumped on the officer, bit him and tried to grab his gun. (https://www.theroot.com/dejuan-guillo...)
The list keeps growing. I’ve noticed that fatal police shootings generate less uproar lately, maybe we’re inured.
July 2, 2020
"I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street," recounts the tragic death of 43 year old Eric Garner that occurred as Staten Island (New York City) police were attempting to arrest him for selling illicit cigarettes. Matt Taibi does a workmanlike job of piecing together the societal circumstances that led to Garner's demise.
As Matt Taibi writes:
"Garner's real crime was being a conspicuous black man of slovenly appearance who just happened to spend his days standing on the street across from a string of high-end condominium complexes."
Eric Garner's death was due to an accumulation of factors, though ultimately it was caused by a bad cop who had a record of substantiated complaints and was known to use excessive force.
Garner's "job" was selling illegal cigarettes. New York City under Mayor Bloomberg had taxed cigarettes to the point where a pack cost $14. This is an exorbitant sum for a pack of smokes and entrepreneurs like Garner took advantage of it. Garner hired drivers to go to Virginia, where cigarettes were cheap, and carry them across state lines and back to him in New York. He made a decent-enough living to support his wife, family and mistress.
Garner would never have been selling cigarettes except that he had been to prison several times on drug convictions and, as a convicted felon, he could not even obtain a minimum wage job. Garner was certainly no saint, but by all accounts of people who lived, worked or hung around the area across from Tompkinsville Park, on Bay Street in Staten Island, Garner had a reputation as a kind man and was well-liked.
Not much effort is made to claim prison as a place of rehabilitation, as in times past. Thus Garner came out of jail with zero hope at providing for himself and his family. This lack of rehabilitation services is particularly true for prisoners coming out of state prisons, as the federal prison system does have rehabilitation programs for some parolees. Because of this societal shift where prison was proudly claimed to be a punishment, with a tacit assumption that no prisoner could be "rehabilitated," thousands of men like Eric Garner were released back into society with little hope of having a normal life. Being a black male certainly did not help Garner's chances for a smooth reentry into civilian life.
In the 1990's under New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, along with his like-minded police chief Bill Bratton, the practice of stop and frisk became routine. This was based on what is called the "Broken Windows" theory which asserts that minor crimes lead to bigger crimes. Police began a campaign of harassment with strong racial bias against blacks, Latinos and other people of color. The stop and frisk philosophy operated on the notion that certain people (read: minorities) in certain "bad" neighborhoods were perpetrating most of these minor crimes and turning the areas where they resided into high crime havens. Stop and frisk allowed for a policy of police profiling and harassment of minorities. Gratuitous police stops went sky high in New York as this policy was implemented.
And the stop and frisk continued under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was quoted as saying:
Ninety-five percent of murders- murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16-25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city (inaudible). And that’s where the real crime is. You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of people that are getting killed. So you want to spend the money on a lot of cops in the streets. Put those cops where the crime is, which means in minority neighborhoods. So one of the unintended consequences is people say, ‘Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana that are all minorities.’ Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them… And then they start… ‘Oh I don’t want to get caught.’ So they don’t bring the gun. They still have a gun, but they leave it at home.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-an...
There were several class action lawsuits brought by justice organizations to curtail stop and frisk, and many felt that in 2014 the election of liberal DeBlasio would crack down on police profiling--but he also hired Bill Bratton and police continued their stop and frisk tactics.
What does all this have to do with Eric Garner?
Well, Eric Garner, a harmless street purveyor of illicit cigarettes, was frequently arrested and on this day he attracted the attention of officers after he broke up a fight on the street. They began a typical harassment that resulted in this:
(Warning--the video below contains graphic violence and could be upsetting to some viewers)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/v...-
chokehold-death-video
Eric Garner did resist arrest but never physically attacked officers and was simply asking them in a calm manner when they approached to leave him alone. Instead, they attempted to take him into custody and one officer placed in him an illegal choke hold, a technique banned by the department. After saying, "I can't breathe!"11 times, he had an asthma attack and died. Garner's obesity (he weighed about 350 lbs, or 158 kg), history of heart disease and asthma also contributed to his death.
Taibbi does note that Staten Island is a highly segregated borough of New York City, with whites mostly living on the lower portion and blacks and other people of color living in the upper regions, where Eric Garner was killed. The area on Bay Street across from Tompkinsville Park was slowly being gentrified and several pricey high-rise condominium towers had been put up in hopes of attracting commuters to Manhattan who wanted close access to the ferries that go back and forth from Staten Island to Manhattan Island. Police had been increasingly vigilant after the condos were erected.
After the death, the New York Police Commissioner said that Garner was placed in an illegal choke hold that had been outlawed by the department in 1993. A grand jury failed to indict the officer, though he was finally fired in 2019 for his illicit choke hold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCB9v....
Matt Taibi does a good job of telling Eric Garner's story. On occasion, though, Taibi can get a bit histrionic when railing against the system that killed Eric Garner--but generally he reports this tragedy with decently written factual information. I'm a whim reader and this title caught me as I was browsing on Amazon and thinking about the recent death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, also involving a police altercation and attempt to subdue Mr. Floyd. It's a sad book but serves as a reminder of what can happen when authority goes unchecked and horrible catastrophes result.
As Matt Taibi writes:
"Garner's real crime was being a conspicuous black man of slovenly appearance who just happened to spend his days standing on the street across from a string of high-end condominium complexes."
Eric Garner's death was due to an accumulation of factors, though ultimately it was caused by a bad cop who had a record of substantiated complaints and was known to use excessive force.
Garner's "job" was selling illegal cigarettes. New York City under Mayor Bloomberg had taxed cigarettes to the point where a pack cost $14. This is an exorbitant sum for a pack of smokes and entrepreneurs like Garner took advantage of it. Garner hired drivers to go to Virginia, where cigarettes were cheap, and carry them across state lines and back to him in New York. He made a decent-enough living to support his wife, family and mistress.
Garner would never have been selling cigarettes except that he had been to prison several times on drug convictions and, as a convicted felon, he could not even obtain a minimum wage job. Garner was certainly no saint, but by all accounts of people who lived, worked or hung around the area across from Tompkinsville Park, on Bay Street in Staten Island, Garner had a reputation as a kind man and was well-liked.
Not much effort is made to claim prison as a place of rehabilitation, as in times past. Thus Garner came out of jail with zero hope at providing for himself and his family. This lack of rehabilitation services is particularly true for prisoners coming out of state prisons, as the federal prison system does have rehabilitation programs for some parolees. Because of this societal shift where prison was proudly claimed to be a punishment, with a tacit assumption that no prisoner could be "rehabilitated," thousands of men like Eric Garner were released back into society with little hope of having a normal life. Being a black male certainly did not help Garner's chances for a smooth reentry into civilian life.
In the 1990's under New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, along with his like-minded police chief Bill Bratton, the practice of stop and frisk became routine. This was based on what is called the "Broken Windows" theory which asserts that minor crimes lead to bigger crimes. Police began a campaign of harassment with strong racial bias against blacks, Latinos and other people of color. The stop and frisk philosophy operated on the notion that certain people (read: minorities) in certain "bad" neighborhoods were perpetrating most of these minor crimes and turning the areas where they resided into high crime havens. Stop and frisk allowed for a policy of police profiling and harassment of minorities. Gratuitous police stops went sky high in New York as this policy was implemented.
And the stop and frisk continued under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was quoted as saying:
Ninety-five percent of murders- murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16-25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city (inaudible). And that’s where the real crime is. You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of people that are getting killed. So you want to spend the money on a lot of cops in the streets. Put those cops where the crime is, which means in minority neighborhoods. So one of the unintended consequences is people say, ‘Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana that are all minorities.’ Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them… And then they start… ‘Oh I don’t want to get caught.’ So they don’t bring the gun. They still have a gun, but they leave it at home.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-an...
There were several class action lawsuits brought by justice organizations to curtail stop and frisk, and many felt that in 2014 the election of liberal DeBlasio would crack down on police profiling--but he also hired Bill Bratton and police continued their stop and frisk tactics.
What does all this have to do with Eric Garner?
Well, Eric Garner, a harmless street purveyor of illicit cigarettes, was frequently arrested and on this day he attracted the attention of officers after he broke up a fight on the street. They began a typical harassment that resulted in this:
(Warning--the video below contains graphic violence and could be upsetting to some viewers)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/v...-
chokehold-death-video
Eric Garner did resist arrest but never physically attacked officers and was simply asking them in a calm manner when they approached to leave him alone. Instead, they attempted to take him into custody and one officer placed in him an illegal choke hold, a technique banned by the department. After saying, "I can't breathe!"11 times, he had an asthma attack and died. Garner's obesity (he weighed about 350 lbs, or 158 kg), history of heart disease and asthma also contributed to his death.
Taibbi does note that Staten Island is a highly segregated borough of New York City, with whites mostly living on the lower portion and blacks and other people of color living in the upper regions, where Eric Garner was killed. The area on Bay Street across from Tompkinsville Park was slowly being gentrified and several pricey high-rise condominium towers had been put up in hopes of attracting commuters to Manhattan who wanted close access to the ferries that go back and forth from Staten Island to Manhattan Island. Police had been increasingly vigilant after the condos were erected.
After the death, the New York Police Commissioner said that Garner was placed in an illegal choke hold that had been outlawed by the department in 1993. A grand jury failed to indict the officer, though he was finally fired in 2019 for his illicit choke hold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCB9v....
Matt Taibi does a good job of telling Eric Garner's story. On occasion, though, Taibi can get a bit histrionic when railing against the system that killed Eric Garner--but generally he reports this tragedy with decently written factual information. I'm a whim reader and this title caught me as I was browsing on Amazon and thinking about the recent death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, also involving a police altercation and attempt to subdue Mr. Floyd. It's a sad book but serves as a reminder of what can happen when authority goes unchecked and horrible catastrophes result.
October 29, 2017
I am going to review this book at some point. But, the world we live in right now is just crazy!! Information regarding the author of this book, which came to light just as I turned the last pages of this book have stunned me. While, I realize this is a story that needs telling, that Eric's daughter, Erica, needs the whole story told, and is counting on this book, and it is an important book, I'm going to come back to it after things with this author are clearer, and I can approach it without those images in my mind.
August 13, 2017
ERIC GARNER died on the streets of Staten Island on July 17, 2014 at the hands of a New York City Police Officer. He was 43 years old, weighed 350 pounds at the time and was in poor health. He was also a known drug dealer. As a big, imposing man, he was intimidating, but for the most part well-liked and harmless. He loved his family, wanted to provide for them, but made poor choices repeatedly spending a considerable amount of time in and out of prison.
Despite his criminal lifestyle, despite resisting (a false) arrest, ERIC did not deserve the brutal treatment that caused his demise.
I CAN'T BREATHE covers ERIC'S tumultuous family life, references numerous police brutality cases, and gives the reader a look at the life of the man who recorded the video....before and after.
Also covered is the shocking 'no indictment' verdict and the $5.9M out of court settlement paid by the NYPD.
Informative and well written read that addresses the racial divide in our country, current leadership and political issues that often get in the way of the truth.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
September 18, 2017
I found this nonfiction book hard to put down. It’s about Eric Garner and his death at the hands of overzealous police, but it’s also about all the lawyers and judges and policies in place to protect police officers and encourage the harassment of black and brown people.
Garner comes off as a sympathetic though flawed individual. The police officers and other members of law enforcement do not come off looking good at all. This is not about good cops; it’s about the bad ones who go unpunished.
I’ve been a fan of Matt Taibbi’s journalism for years, and this book cemented my admiration for his work. He criticizes liberals and conservatives alike for allowing this sort of discriminatory policing to be encouraged. Garner was a large man and an easy bust, and because of various quotas police officers were given, he was often arrested for his petty crimes. He didn’t get worked up when he was arrested for actually committing a crime, but they harassed him when he’d just be doing his laundry at the laundry mat or something, too.
The man who took the famous video of Garner was also harassed endlessly after the video went viral the world over. Some of the minor crimes he did commit, but many of the busts were entirely fabricated to get him to cop to a plea.
The descriptions of police brutality are hard to read. What this book is more concerned about, though, are things like why the prosecuting attorney Dan Donovan brought in 50 witnesses and yet failed to bring an indictment against the officer who did the illegal chokehold. (Daniel Pantaleo is still a police officer despite numerous abuse allegations, including completely unfounded strip searches conducted on the street in broad daylight.) Moreover, countless lawyers tried to get the grand jury information unsealed, to no avail. What did they have to hide? Donovan successfully ran as a Republican to fill the seat by congressman Michael Grimm, who’d been indicted on twenty federal counts. You may remember him as the lovely man who told a reporter (while a TV crew was filming) that he’d throw him over the balcony.
The reason the Garner case made so much news is because it was all caught on video. “Absent the cellphone videos, in other words, nobody would like have heard how Eric Garner really died.” But in this way his case was the exception.
I was shocked to hear all the obstacles a person has to go through to get a substantiated abuse charge against a police officer. All we, the public, ever hear about are the families who get million-dollar settlements. They represent virtually none of the cases actually alleged.
This is an important book about race and policing—not just individual police officers but the system as a whole. I could quote huge passages from this book. Highly recommend.
Thanks so much to NetGalley and Random House for the opportunity to review this advanced copy. RELEASES OCTOBER 24.
For more of my reviews, please visit: http://www.theresaalan.net/blog
Garner comes off as a sympathetic though flawed individual. The police officers and other members of law enforcement do not come off looking good at all. This is not about good cops; it’s about the bad ones who go unpunished.
I’ve been a fan of Matt Taibbi’s journalism for years, and this book cemented my admiration for his work. He criticizes liberals and conservatives alike for allowing this sort of discriminatory policing to be encouraged. Garner was a large man and an easy bust, and because of various quotas police officers were given, he was often arrested for his petty crimes. He didn’t get worked up when he was arrested for actually committing a crime, but they harassed him when he’d just be doing his laundry at the laundry mat or something, too.
The man who took the famous video of Garner was also harassed endlessly after the video went viral the world over. Some of the minor crimes he did commit, but many of the busts were entirely fabricated to get him to cop to a plea.
The descriptions of police brutality are hard to read. What this book is more concerned about, though, are things like why the prosecuting attorney Dan Donovan brought in 50 witnesses and yet failed to bring an indictment against the officer who did the illegal chokehold. (Daniel Pantaleo is still a police officer despite numerous abuse allegations, including completely unfounded strip searches conducted on the street in broad daylight.) Moreover, countless lawyers tried to get the grand jury information unsealed, to no avail. What did they have to hide? Donovan successfully ran as a Republican to fill the seat by congressman Michael Grimm, who’d been indicted on twenty federal counts. You may remember him as the lovely man who told a reporter (while a TV crew was filming) that he’d throw him over the balcony.
The reason the Garner case made so much news is because it was all caught on video. “Absent the cellphone videos, in other words, nobody would like have heard how Eric Garner really died.” But in this way his case was the exception.
I was shocked to hear all the obstacles a person has to go through to get a substantiated abuse charge against a police officer. All we, the public, ever hear about are the families who get million-dollar settlements. They represent virtually none of the cases actually alleged.
This is an important book about race and policing—not just individual police officers but the system as a whole. I could quote huge passages from this book. Highly recommend.
Thanks so much to NetGalley and Random House for the opportunity to review this advanced copy. RELEASES OCTOBER 24.
For more of my reviews, please visit: http://www.theresaalan.net/blog
April 13, 2020
"......America had essentially decided to start moving back in time, formally pushing back
against the civil rights era. Garner's death and the great distances that were traveled to
protect his killer, now stand as testaments to America's pathological desire to avoid equal
treatment under the law for its black population."
-Matt Taibbi... 'I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street'
In Matt Taibbi's book, 'The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap', he delved into the subject of economic inequality in the United States and how this vast gap in wealth has resulted in the mass incarceration of poor, mainly black and brown people... but a far different justice system exists for the wealthy. In this book, 'I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street', he digs deeper into this topic through one particular man's tragic story, one that became not only a national symbol of so much that has gone wrong in a terribly divided country; but one that has become a rallying cry of sorts for a social justice movement. That rallying cry and the title of the book come from the last words spoken by 43-year-old Eric Garner as he lay dying, facedown on Bay Street in Staten Island, New York on July 17, 2014.
At the time, the killing of Eric Garner was the latest of many stories of the deaths of black men which occurred during arrests or while in police custody. As with the majority of these cases, public opinion and opinions offered in the media seemed to split: some viewed Garner's death as a clear case of ongoing police harassment and brutality; while others offered the opinion that if Garner had complied with police commands and had not resisted arrest, the tragedy could have been avoided. Mr Taibbi takes this divide, which seems to be a constant in American society and uses it as a starting point for an in-depth investigation.. not only of Eric Garner's life and death and how the justice system functioned (or didn't function) in response to his death; but also to examine the societal conditions which led to this moment.
In part, this is a book which brings Eric Garner to life. Through extensive interviews with Garner's family, friends and people who lived in his neighborhood, Matt Taibbi presents Eric Garner not as a victim or even a candidate for sainthood but as an imperfect human being.. a man who was a son, husband and father who, when faced with limited choices in his life, sometimes made bad decisions. But he was also a man who was described and funny and mild-mannered and had an excellent ability to perform mathematical computations and store these numbers in his memory, which proved to be beneficial for his business (his 'street hustle'). Garner married his wife Esaw, a woman a bit older than he was, when he was barely more than a teenager and instantly became a father to her two children. Garner had old-fashioned values regarding the roles of men and women and believed he should be the family's sole breadwinner. After attempting to work a series of odd jobs but unable to make ends meet, Eric Garner began a side hustle of selling crack cocaine, which led to the first of his subsequent 30 arrests in the mid-1990s.
Garner spent many years in and out of jail for selling crack and this took a toll not only on his family, as they were forced to move from place to place due to their lack of income; but these years also took a toll on Garner's health. At 6'2" and weighing more than 350 pounds, he struggled with obesity, sleep apnea, severe allergies and diabetes. It was just as he realized that continuing his pattern of getting arrested for selling drugs was not going to work for him or his family that Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in an effort to patch a giant hole in New York City's budget, decided to raise taxes on cigarettes by 1800%. Viewing this new tax as a business opportunity, Eric Garner hired a couple of people to travel to Virginia to purchase cartons of cigarettes which were sold much more cheaply. He then stood on the corner in his Staten Island neighborhood and sold untaxed cigarettes ("looseys")... 2 cigarettes for $1. He made the calculation that a misdemeanor charge and fine for selling looseys was better for his family and himself than felony charges and jail time for selling crack. Unfortunately for Garner, his thinking proved to be a terrible miscalculation. While he had been spending time behind bars, policing had changed in New York City and ultimately, he would become one of the victims if this new policing policy.
Over the years, as I've read about the many cases of police shootings and police brutality, one question was always in the back of my mind. How did we get to this point? Matt Taibbi attempts to answer this question. He proposes that to understand any trend occurring in society, we must look to the past. To understand the relationship between police and people residing in impoverished neighborhoods, Mr. Taibbi begins in the 1960s, which was a time of social unrest, violence and a struggle for change. The 1960s brought the Civil rights Act and the Voting Rights Act but it also brought racial tensions and riots and also Vietnam War-inspired protests. This chaos and turmoil alarmed and frightened middle class America and they began clamoring for a return to order.
In the United States, up until this chaotic period in the 1960s and 70s, the primary role of policing was considered to be patrolling the streets and investigating crimes after they had been committed. It was widely believed that crime occurred because of specific social problems.. poverty, racism and social injustice. Because only widespread societal changes could alter these facts, the police were incapable of doing anything other than investigating crimes when and where they occurred. In other words, police were enforcers of the law. But a couple of things happened during this time period which changed the role of police and how they would interact with the citizenry. The first was a Supreme Court case. In 1968, Terry v Ohio was argued before the Supreme Court. The case centered around a Cleveland police officer named Martin McFadden who, while on patrol, observed two black men... John Terry and Richard Chilton... standing in front of a department store on a street corner. These men were joined by a white man named Carl Katz. Officer McFadden thoughts they looked suspicious. after approaching and questioning the men, he ended up searching them and discovered that two of them had weapons. The question before the court was: Did McFadden have the right to question and physically search these men based only on his suspicion that they might be planning to commit a crime? Although the Supreme Court in 1968... the court of Chief Justice Earl Warren... had been known for expanding civil liberties, its ruling in Terry v Ohio broke with that tradition. The Terry decision basically said that police searches would rest on the judgment of police officers. Police could stop and question anyone they chose if they had a 'reasonable suspicion' that a crime was going to be committed. The decision stated: "Under the Fourth Amendment the U.S. Constitution, a police officer may stop a suspect on the street and frisk him or her without probably cause to arrest if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime and has a reasonable belief that the person may be armed and presently dangerous."
The second change that impacted policing and the power granted to police developed from a sociological theory. George Kelling, a former Minneapolis police officer and social worker, became instrumental in developing new theories about policing. Kelling came to the conclusion that policing needed to be expanded from simply enforcing the law to 'maintaining order'. Kellling, along with Harvard professor James Wilson, decided to collaborate and write an article for 'Atlantic' magazine in 1982. They called their theory "broken windows" and it stated that "if a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken." In other words, Kelling and Wilson believed that order in a society could be maintained only if the EXTERNAL symbols of disorder were eliminated. The only way to achieve this was to bestow on police virtually limitless power. They needed to possess the power to enforce not only the written laws but also the unwritten , unspoken laws in society... societal expectations.
What I found most bizarre and maddening about the eagerness with which politicians and police officials embraced this "broken windows" theory was their obliviousness to all the ways this theory could go wrong when translated into practice in the 'real' world. Kelling himself clearly stated that he was aware that giving the police unlimited power to enforce those societal expectations could be misused. He wrote about his own personal experiences.... "I'd already been exposed in South Boston, for instance, to people whose idea of 'maintaining order' was keeping the black people out of their neighborhoods." And yet, despite the obvious problems 'broken windows' presented. it WAS widely embraced by police departments across the country.
When applied directly to what happened to Eric Garner, one additional factor must be considered and that is the adoption of statistics as an incentive or a goal-setting strategy in policing. In New York specifically, Bill Bratton took over command of the city's police department and he was a fan of both 'broken windows' and statistics. He began a process of setting up 'goals' or numerical targets for each of the city's police precincts to meet. This new style of policing .... referred to in many communities as 'quality-of-life' or 'zero tolerance' ... was highly interventionist and focused on visible symbols of disorder, such as the vaguely defined ' blocking pedestrian access' ( standing on the street), vagrancy, making 'furtive' movements or 'obstructing government administration'... all essentially meaningless when attempting to define legally. Theoretically, this 'quality-of-life' policing would depend on officers' use of discretion, knowing when to arrest a person and when it would be more appropriate to work out a solution to the problem. In reality, what was occurring was the police, under pressure to meet statistical goals, were rounding up people without using much discretion at all.
This new method of policing quickly demonstrated how dramatically the number of stops and searches were increasing. In New York City at the height of the program, more than 680,000 people were stopped and searched; and more troubling, although blacks and hispanics make up only about half of the population, they made up 80-90% of the searches. Mr. Taibbi writes... "Ultimately, the fatal flaw of broken windows was its ignorance of history... To the black people who were its most frequent targets, the real-life, non-theoretical version of the program instantly evoked overtly racist policing programs from the past.... ".
Regardless of one's opinion on the confrontation that occurred between Eric Garner and police officers Daniel Pantaleo and Justin Damico; and whether or not one agrees with the sociological theory which led to quality-of-life policing, it seems clear that Eric Garner was far more than a single black man who decided he had had enough of what his community considered persistent police harassment. Eric Garner, a real flesh-and-blood man, also became a symbol and carried upon his shoulders the weight of history... a history of a country and a society that has seemed unwilling or unable to deal with its racist past.
against the civil rights era. Garner's death and the great distances that were traveled to
protect his killer, now stand as testaments to America's pathological desire to avoid equal
treatment under the law for its black population."
-Matt Taibbi... 'I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street'
In Matt Taibbi's book, 'The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap', he delved into the subject of economic inequality in the United States and how this vast gap in wealth has resulted in the mass incarceration of poor, mainly black and brown people... but a far different justice system exists for the wealthy. In this book, 'I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street', he digs deeper into this topic through one particular man's tragic story, one that became not only a national symbol of so much that has gone wrong in a terribly divided country; but one that has become a rallying cry of sorts for a social justice movement. That rallying cry and the title of the book come from the last words spoken by 43-year-old Eric Garner as he lay dying, facedown on Bay Street in Staten Island, New York on July 17, 2014.
At the time, the killing of Eric Garner was the latest of many stories of the deaths of black men which occurred during arrests or while in police custody. As with the majority of these cases, public opinion and opinions offered in the media seemed to split: some viewed Garner's death as a clear case of ongoing police harassment and brutality; while others offered the opinion that if Garner had complied with police commands and had not resisted arrest, the tragedy could have been avoided. Mr Taibbi takes this divide, which seems to be a constant in American society and uses it as a starting point for an in-depth investigation.. not only of Eric Garner's life and death and how the justice system functioned (or didn't function) in response to his death; but also to examine the societal conditions which led to this moment.
In part, this is a book which brings Eric Garner to life. Through extensive interviews with Garner's family, friends and people who lived in his neighborhood, Matt Taibbi presents Eric Garner not as a victim or even a candidate for sainthood but as an imperfect human being.. a man who was a son, husband and father who, when faced with limited choices in his life, sometimes made bad decisions. But he was also a man who was described and funny and mild-mannered and had an excellent ability to perform mathematical computations and store these numbers in his memory, which proved to be beneficial for his business (his 'street hustle'). Garner married his wife Esaw, a woman a bit older than he was, when he was barely more than a teenager and instantly became a father to her two children. Garner had old-fashioned values regarding the roles of men and women and believed he should be the family's sole breadwinner. After attempting to work a series of odd jobs but unable to make ends meet, Eric Garner began a side hustle of selling crack cocaine, which led to the first of his subsequent 30 arrests in the mid-1990s.
Garner spent many years in and out of jail for selling crack and this took a toll not only on his family, as they were forced to move from place to place due to their lack of income; but these years also took a toll on Garner's health. At 6'2" and weighing more than 350 pounds, he struggled with obesity, sleep apnea, severe allergies and diabetes. It was just as he realized that continuing his pattern of getting arrested for selling drugs was not going to work for him or his family that Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in an effort to patch a giant hole in New York City's budget, decided to raise taxes on cigarettes by 1800%. Viewing this new tax as a business opportunity, Eric Garner hired a couple of people to travel to Virginia to purchase cartons of cigarettes which were sold much more cheaply. He then stood on the corner in his Staten Island neighborhood and sold untaxed cigarettes ("looseys")... 2 cigarettes for $1. He made the calculation that a misdemeanor charge and fine for selling looseys was better for his family and himself than felony charges and jail time for selling crack. Unfortunately for Garner, his thinking proved to be a terrible miscalculation. While he had been spending time behind bars, policing had changed in New York City and ultimately, he would become one of the victims if this new policing policy.
Over the years, as I've read about the many cases of police shootings and police brutality, one question was always in the back of my mind. How did we get to this point? Matt Taibbi attempts to answer this question. He proposes that to understand any trend occurring in society, we must look to the past. To understand the relationship between police and people residing in impoverished neighborhoods, Mr. Taibbi begins in the 1960s, which was a time of social unrest, violence and a struggle for change. The 1960s brought the Civil rights Act and the Voting Rights Act but it also brought racial tensions and riots and also Vietnam War-inspired protests. This chaos and turmoil alarmed and frightened middle class America and they began clamoring for a return to order.
In the United States, up until this chaotic period in the 1960s and 70s, the primary role of policing was considered to be patrolling the streets and investigating crimes after they had been committed. It was widely believed that crime occurred because of specific social problems.. poverty, racism and social injustice. Because only widespread societal changes could alter these facts, the police were incapable of doing anything other than investigating crimes when and where they occurred. In other words, police were enforcers of the law. But a couple of things happened during this time period which changed the role of police and how they would interact with the citizenry. The first was a Supreme Court case. In 1968, Terry v Ohio was argued before the Supreme Court. The case centered around a Cleveland police officer named Martin McFadden who, while on patrol, observed two black men... John Terry and Richard Chilton... standing in front of a department store on a street corner. These men were joined by a white man named Carl Katz. Officer McFadden thoughts they looked suspicious. after approaching and questioning the men, he ended up searching them and discovered that two of them had weapons. The question before the court was: Did McFadden have the right to question and physically search these men based only on his suspicion that they might be planning to commit a crime? Although the Supreme Court in 1968... the court of Chief Justice Earl Warren... had been known for expanding civil liberties, its ruling in Terry v Ohio broke with that tradition. The Terry decision basically said that police searches would rest on the judgment of police officers. Police could stop and question anyone they chose if they had a 'reasonable suspicion' that a crime was going to be committed. The decision stated: "Under the Fourth Amendment the U.S. Constitution, a police officer may stop a suspect on the street and frisk him or her without probably cause to arrest if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime and has a reasonable belief that the person may be armed and presently dangerous."
The second change that impacted policing and the power granted to police developed from a sociological theory. George Kelling, a former Minneapolis police officer and social worker, became instrumental in developing new theories about policing. Kelling came to the conclusion that policing needed to be expanded from simply enforcing the law to 'maintaining order'. Kellling, along with Harvard professor James Wilson, decided to collaborate and write an article for 'Atlantic' magazine in 1982. They called their theory "broken windows" and it stated that "if a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken." In other words, Kelling and Wilson believed that order in a society could be maintained only if the EXTERNAL symbols of disorder were eliminated. The only way to achieve this was to bestow on police virtually limitless power. They needed to possess the power to enforce not only the written laws but also the unwritten , unspoken laws in society... societal expectations.
What I found most bizarre and maddening about the eagerness with which politicians and police officials embraced this "broken windows" theory was their obliviousness to all the ways this theory could go wrong when translated into practice in the 'real' world. Kelling himself clearly stated that he was aware that giving the police unlimited power to enforce those societal expectations could be misused. He wrote about his own personal experiences.... "I'd already been exposed in South Boston, for instance, to people whose idea of 'maintaining order' was keeping the black people out of their neighborhoods." And yet, despite the obvious problems 'broken windows' presented. it WAS widely embraced by police departments across the country.
When applied directly to what happened to Eric Garner, one additional factor must be considered and that is the adoption of statistics as an incentive or a goal-setting strategy in policing. In New York specifically, Bill Bratton took over command of the city's police department and he was a fan of both 'broken windows' and statistics. He began a process of setting up 'goals' or numerical targets for each of the city's police precincts to meet. This new style of policing .... referred to in many communities as 'quality-of-life' or 'zero tolerance' ... was highly interventionist and focused on visible symbols of disorder, such as the vaguely defined ' blocking pedestrian access' ( standing on the street), vagrancy, making 'furtive' movements or 'obstructing government administration'... all essentially meaningless when attempting to define legally. Theoretically, this 'quality-of-life' policing would depend on officers' use of discretion, knowing when to arrest a person and when it would be more appropriate to work out a solution to the problem. In reality, what was occurring was the police, under pressure to meet statistical goals, were rounding up people without using much discretion at all.
This new method of policing quickly demonstrated how dramatically the number of stops and searches were increasing. In New York City at the height of the program, more than 680,000 people were stopped and searched; and more troubling, although blacks and hispanics make up only about half of the population, they made up 80-90% of the searches. Mr. Taibbi writes... "Ultimately, the fatal flaw of broken windows was its ignorance of history... To the black people who were its most frequent targets, the real-life, non-theoretical version of the program instantly evoked overtly racist policing programs from the past.... ".
Regardless of one's opinion on the confrontation that occurred between Eric Garner and police officers Daniel Pantaleo and Justin Damico; and whether or not one agrees with the sociological theory which led to quality-of-life policing, it seems clear that Eric Garner was far more than a single black man who decided he had had enough of what his community considered persistent police harassment. Eric Garner, a real flesh-and-blood man, also became a symbol and carried upon his shoulders the weight of history... a history of a country and a society that has seemed unwilling or unable to deal with its racist past.
November 18, 2017
The detailed nature of this book about the life and death of Eric Garner allows us to see, in horrible living color, exactly where we’re at in terms of race relations in the United States. Eric Garner died July 17, 2014 in Staten Island, victimized on this day by police who put him in a chokehold and ignored his pleas that he could not breathe. What Taibbi does exceptionally well in this difficult book is allow us to see Eric Garner for the man he was—a well-liked and respected member of his community.
The entire story told here is a long and winding one, going back to pick up relevant cases along the way, including that of Carnell Russ of Alabama, whose death in 1971 by pistol shot at close range in a police station was challenged in court a number of times until finally we learn a monetary award was never paid to Carnell’s widow. Forty-five years later the original prosecutor in the Eric Garner trial, Dan Donovan, was elected to Congress, proud of his role in protecting the white people, in his eyes, unjustly under attack for upholding the law.
So carefully has Taibbi prepared his case in the writing of this book that when we read the words “disrespect for the law, contempt for society, a refusal to abide by the responsibilities of a civilized people,” we briefly imagine the words were chosen to describe the men and women of the NYC police force who refused to give credence to citizen complaints about uncalled for police harassment and reckless endangerment. But no, this language was used by Joseph Concannon, retired NYPD captain and staunch defender of whatever the police did in the course of their duties, illegal or not.
City politicians elected before, during, and after the prosecution of the Eric Garner case come off looking weak and ineffectual at best, deliberately obfuscating at worst. The case of the killing of Eric Garner came amidst a rash of police killings around the country that were well publicized, mostly due to actual video of the crimes. It is absolutely horrifying to imagine for a moment how these cases would have been treated in the absence of a video record. Even in these cases, obstruction into the behaviors of repeat offender police is rampant, common, and from the point of view of the citizenry, indefensible.
The black lives examined in this work are extremely stressful. Putting ourselves in their place, we might even say these lives and conditions of life are hopeless. But Eric Garner did not see things that way, and certainly on the day he died, he was the happiest he’d been in a very long time, his son having just been awarded a sports scholarship for advanced education. Taibbi is able to make us feel the heat that day in July, and the satisfaction the big man would have felt. We’re plenty pleased for him, too.
I have wondered, in thinking of Taibbi’s past work, what it would be like to to be on the other side of one of his scathing investigations. Now we know, because he co-authored a book during his expat days in Moscow, in which he targeted everyone in the outsized-profits-fueled economy, from foreigners gaming the system to Russian oligarchs and their deadly, beautiful hookers. Adolescent, ridiculous, and forgettable, excerpts I read from that earlier work should have meant a far longer, more circuitous path to legitimate journalism. The argument in the link above charges Taibbi with sexism and misogyny, a shadow of which, it could be argued, appeared in his description here of Assistant DA Anne Grady.
It is my contention that Taibbi’s work uncovering the hows and whys of the life surrounding Eric Garner is a far weightier thing on the scales of right and wrong-doing than that earlier work. It is important we all scour our own past for sexism—doling it out or letting it pass—before nailing the coffin shut on the talent and real heart shown here. With this book, Taibbi blows past any criticisms that could be leveled for those earlier errors in judgment and gives us something terribly important: a honest, raw look at where we stand in our race relations right now. Perhaps only bad boys could understand, empathize with, and give us the nuance of all the imperfect characters Taibbi details for us here, and get to the depth in this story that explains Eric Garner’s life and untimely death.
Several of the Irish-sounding names in this history are exactly those of loved ones within my own family, though I don’t believe I am related to any of them. My grandfather was a Boston cop. What I take from this is that whatever place these white policemen go to in their heads when it comes to fairness and justice, it is not inevitable, and it doesn’t come from the color of their skin. I recall the recently-discovered 19th-C diary of African American boy convict Austin Reed,
The entire story told here is a long and winding one, going back to pick up relevant cases along the way, including that of Carnell Russ of Alabama, whose death in 1971 by pistol shot at close range in a police station was challenged in court a number of times until finally we learn a monetary award was never paid to Carnell’s widow. Forty-five years later the original prosecutor in the Eric Garner trial, Dan Donovan, was elected to Congress, proud of his role in protecting the white people, in his eyes, unjustly under attack for upholding the law.
So carefully has Taibbi prepared his case in the writing of this book that when we read the words “disrespect for the law, contempt for society, a refusal to abide by the responsibilities of a civilized people,” we briefly imagine the words were chosen to describe the men and women of the NYC police force who refused to give credence to citizen complaints about uncalled for police harassment and reckless endangerment. But no, this language was used by Joseph Concannon, retired NYPD captain and staunch defender of whatever the police did in the course of their duties, illegal or not.
City politicians elected before, during, and after the prosecution of the Eric Garner case come off looking weak and ineffectual at best, deliberately obfuscating at worst. The case of the killing of Eric Garner came amidst a rash of police killings around the country that were well publicized, mostly due to actual video of the crimes. It is absolutely horrifying to imagine for a moment how these cases would have been treated in the absence of a video record. Even in these cases, obstruction into the behaviors of repeat offender police is rampant, common, and from the point of view of the citizenry, indefensible.
The black lives examined in this work are extremely stressful. Putting ourselves in their place, we might even say these lives and conditions of life are hopeless. But Eric Garner did not see things that way, and certainly on the day he died, he was the happiest he’d been in a very long time, his son having just been awarded a sports scholarship for advanced education. Taibbi is able to make us feel the heat that day in July, and the satisfaction the big man would have felt. We’re plenty pleased for him, too.
I have wondered, in thinking of Taibbi’s past work, what it would be like to to be on the other side of one of his scathing investigations. Now we know, because he co-authored a book during his expat days in Moscow, in which he targeted everyone in the outsized-profits-fueled economy, from foreigners gaming the system to Russian oligarchs and their deadly, beautiful hookers. Adolescent, ridiculous, and forgettable, excerpts I read from that earlier work should have meant a far longer, more circuitous path to legitimate journalism. The argument in the link above charges Taibbi with sexism and misogyny, a shadow of which, it could be argued, appeared in his description here of Assistant DA Anne Grady.
It is my contention that Taibbi’s work uncovering the hows and whys of the life surrounding Eric Garner is a far weightier thing on the scales of right and wrong-doing than that earlier work. It is important we all scour our own past for sexism—doling it out or letting it pass—before nailing the coffin shut on the talent and real heart shown here. With this book, Taibbi blows past any criticisms that could be leveled for those earlier errors in judgment and gives us something terribly important: a honest, raw look at where we stand in our race relations right now. Perhaps only bad boys could understand, empathize with, and give us the nuance of all the imperfect characters Taibbi details for us here, and get to the depth in this story that explains Eric Garner’s life and untimely death.
Several of the Irish-sounding names in this history are exactly those of loved ones within my own family, though I don’t believe I am related to any of them. My grandfather was a Boston cop. What I take from this is that whatever place these white policemen go to in their heads when it comes to fairness and justice, it is not inevitable, and it doesn’t come from the color of their skin. I recall the recently-discovered 19th-C diary of African American boy convict Austin Reed,
“Yes, me brave Irish boys, me loves you till the day that I am laid cold under the sod, and I would let the last drop of this dark blood run and drain from these black veins of mine to rescue you from the hands of a full blooded Yankee…Reader, if you are on the right side of an Irishman, you have the best friend in the world.”A lot has happened from then to now, but nothing that can’t be undone.
December 4, 2017
“Never be content to sit back and watch as others rights are trampled upon. Your rights could be next.” -DaShanne Stokes
Matt Taibbi, a notable journalist for Rolling Stone Magazine and NYT bestselling author, specializes in reportage of economic, political and social injustice. “ I Can’t Breathe: A Killing On Bay Street” recounts the life and death of Eric Garner (1970-2014) who died on Staten Island, NYC after he was placed in a police choke-hold, and left unconscious on the public sidewalk without aid (CPR) until the arrival of emergency services. This event was captured on video; fueling public outrage, protests and demonstrations by thousands of people and demands for justice.
Eric Garner was a devoted family man-- husband, father and grandfather. Garner was proud of his oldest son, Eric Jr. who had been chosen to receive a college athletic scholarship. He provided for his family’s support selling packs and single “loosie” cigarettes, the high rates of NYC taxation made business sustainable. However, the risk had increased significantly: under constant police surveillance, Garner had been harassed and arrested endlessly, illegally violated and stripped searched on the street by police officers, he had also been robbed several times. The options for legitimate job placement for an ex-con were strictly limited, and his despair was understandable. Still, he did what he could to maintain respectability and social order, and made the ultimate sacrifice after breaking-up a fight in a public park.
The vast government bureaucracy of the 120th Precinct Staten Island Tomkinsville Park Anti-Crime Unit would prove nearly impossible to hold accountable for the murder of Eric Garner: “The city of New York went to extraordinary lengths to disappear (or flush) Eric Garners death down the institutional memory manhole, into the vast sewer of blood and unpunished murder that raged under its sidewalks.”
A half of century has passed since The Civil Rights Act (1964). Sociologist George Kelling PhD supported idealistic anti-crime measures as ““Broken Windows” and “Stop and Frisk” associated with racial profiling-- particularly in selected neighborhoods with increased elements of (perceived) criminal activity. “Zero Tolerance” policies also gave the police more authority and control to be tough on crime based on their own observations: The “willful disruption of government process” is the “wild card” that allows police to detain and question anyone whether or not they have done anything suspicious or wrong.
Though 72% of NYC illicit drug users were white, 80%-90% of all inmates incarcerated for drug offences were black or Hispanic. Garner, was a very large man, had a prison record related to prior drug convictions, may have been too visible in a (white) area of high-end condominium complexes. Taibbi did not want to define Eric Garner as a political figure, his humanity and family life were portrayed exceptionally well. The trial involving Garners death launched the career of the prosecuting attorney that failed to win justice or a conviction of the policeman that killed him. The election of Donald J. Trump and his appointment of Jeff Sessions as attorney general—Sessions promptly proposed restrictions and limitations of investigations by federal government authorities of corrupt police departments-- dismantling decades of hard work previously accomplished for civil rights.
**With thanks and appreciation to Random House Books via NetGalley for the DDC for the purpose of review.
Matt Taibbi, a notable journalist for Rolling Stone Magazine and NYT bestselling author, specializes in reportage of economic, political and social injustice. “ I Can’t Breathe: A Killing On Bay Street” recounts the life and death of Eric Garner (1970-2014) who died on Staten Island, NYC after he was placed in a police choke-hold, and left unconscious on the public sidewalk without aid (CPR) until the arrival of emergency services. This event was captured on video; fueling public outrage, protests and demonstrations by thousands of people and demands for justice.
Eric Garner was a devoted family man-- husband, father and grandfather. Garner was proud of his oldest son, Eric Jr. who had been chosen to receive a college athletic scholarship. He provided for his family’s support selling packs and single “loosie” cigarettes, the high rates of NYC taxation made business sustainable. However, the risk had increased significantly: under constant police surveillance, Garner had been harassed and arrested endlessly, illegally violated and stripped searched on the street by police officers, he had also been robbed several times. The options for legitimate job placement for an ex-con were strictly limited, and his despair was understandable. Still, he did what he could to maintain respectability and social order, and made the ultimate sacrifice after breaking-up a fight in a public park.
The vast government bureaucracy of the 120th Precinct Staten Island Tomkinsville Park Anti-Crime Unit would prove nearly impossible to hold accountable for the murder of Eric Garner: “The city of New York went to extraordinary lengths to disappear (or flush) Eric Garners death down the institutional memory manhole, into the vast sewer of blood and unpunished murder that raged under its sidewalks.”
A half of century has passed since The Civil Rights Act (1964). Sociologist George Kelling PhD supported idealistic anti-crime measures as ““Broken Windows” and “Stop and Frisk” associated with racial profiling-- particularly in selected neighborhoods with increased elements of (perceived) criminal activity. “Zero Tolerance” policies also gave the police more authority and control to be tough on crime based on their own observations: The “willful disruption of government process” is the “wild card” that allows police to detain and question anyone whether or not they have done anything suspicious or wrong.
Though 72% of NYC illicit drug users were white, 80%-90% of all inmates incarcerated for drug offences were black or Hispanic. Garner, was a very large man, had a prison record related to prior drug convictions, may have been too visible in a (white) area of high-end condominium complexes. Taibbi did not want to define Eric Garner as a political figure, his humanity and family life were portrayed exceptionally well. The trial involving Garners death launched the career of the prosecuting attorney that failed to win justice or a conviction of the policeman that killed him. The election of Donald J. Trump and his appointment of Jeff Sessions as attorney general—Sessions promptly proposed restrictions and limitations of investigations by federal government authorities of corrupt police departments-- dismantling decades of hard work previously accomplished for civil rights.
**With thanks and appreciation to Random House Books via NetGalley for the DDC for the purpose of review.
August 5, 2020
ERIC GARNER died on the streets of Staten Island on July 17, 2014 at the hands of a New York City Police Officer. He was 43 years old, weighed 350 pounds at the time and was in poor health. He was known as a drug dealer, but at the time of his death, he wasn’t even selling loosies (i.e. cigarettes) which he had reformed to sell instead of drugs. He witnessed a fight between two men, and police came up to Eric, a bystander, and killed him.
This is a well-constructed deep-dive into the history, circumstances and systematic racism responsible for countless, unwarranted deaths of black people particularly black men, by police. The insights this book gives into the statistics and conscious construction of racism is horrifying. From details about the stop-and-search policy to the artificial construction of criminal real estate practices. ⠀
⠀⠀
The only thing which lets this book down is Taibbi’s writing - he’s not the most engaging or compelling author. Were it not for the importance of the content he was delivering, I wouldn’t have finished the book - but I needed to know as much as I could about the stop-and-search system and police brutality as I could, and this book delivers a thorough personal and statistical insight into the systematic failures and oversights. Taibbi may not be a natural at long-form writing, but he gets the message across in an informative and accessible way, making this an important and essential read for all.
This is a well-constructed deep-dive into the history, circumstances and systematic racism responsible for countless, unwarranted deaths of black people particularly black men, by police. The insights this book gives into the statistics and conscious construction of racism is horrifying. From details about the stop-and-search policy to the artificial construction of criminal real estate practices. ⠀
⠀⠀
The only thing which lets this book down is Taibbi’s writing - he’s not the most engaging or compelling author. Were it not for the importance of the content he was delivering, I wouldn’t have finished the book - but I needed to know as much as I could about the stop-and-search system and police brutality as I could, and this book delivers a thorough personal and statistical insight into the systematic failures and oversights. Taibbi may not be a natural at long-form writing, but he gets the message across in an informative and accessible way, making this an important and essential read for all.
July 27, 2020
Eric Garner was murdered in July of 2014 by New York City policemen. The policeman, Daniel Pantaleo, who choked him to death was never brought to trial (as well as those standing around who were more or less aiding him – and certainly doing nothing to prevent this). It was all filmed.
The author provides us with a strong journalistic investigation of the before and then the aftermath of this event. It gives a strong indictment of racism and de facto segregation in the United States.
The concept of “Broken Windows" which the New York City police department adopted (along with other cities) had an idealistic beginning in the 1980's. It was - to simplify, a concept to clean up your neighborhoods; have police on the street (not in a patrol car) where they could interact with their fellow citizens. And where they could arrest or stop those who looked “suspicious”. This led to “Stop and Frisk” which applied to those who didn’t “fit in”. This eventually became an open season of oppressing minority groups – namely targeting black and Hispanic people.*
“Stop and Frisk” encouraged certain racist groups to become over-enthusiastic policemen – to outdo themselves, to meet arrest quotas. The role of the police becomes more of a borderland protection restricting where poor people and minority groups go. There were public strip searches. This, in my naïve mind, should never be done.
Page 303 (my book)
What happened to Garner spoke to the increasing desperation of white America to avoid having to ever see, much less speak to or live alongside, people like him.
Essentially this has been going on for hundreds of years under different guises – think of the Jim Crow era in the South. Police departments have a long history of infringing on the rights and dignity of black people without legal repercussions. Without having consequences simply encourages more of this transgressive behavior. The police are under an aura of protection with a bureaucracy that over the years becomes more and more effective at countering investigative inquiry and any attempt to restrict its power.
The author outlines the several layers of bureaucracy that encumbered any effort to bring Daniel Pantaleo to justice. For example, it is nearly impossible for the press or citizens to inquire into the evaluations, complaints, and records of a police officer. After all they are being payed by the tax-paying citizen and this should be made public, one would think.
The author tells us of the Grand Jury that exonerated Daniel Pantaleo of complicity in the death of Eric Garner. A Grand Jury is a preliminary evaluation before an actual trial to determine if there should indeed be a trial. The details of a Grand Jury, for legal reasons beyond me, cannot be made public. There was then an inquiry launched by various groups to obtain the details of the Grand Jury to determine the reasons why it failed to indict – this as well did not succeed.
Page 218-19
This case was not about fine legal abstractions but about brutal obvious reality. [James Meyerson, NAACP lawyer] argued that if the case had been about a white man choked to death by a black man over a cigarette while the black man’s friends watched and did nothing, the killer would have been indicted long ago… “the prosecutor would have convinced a grand jury, and in half a day, with the videotape, with the medical examiner’s report, and with some report saying chokeholds cause people to die and then the audio saying “I can’t breathe” would have gotten indictment for some form of homicide.”
There have been many cases of white police officers beating and/or mistreating black people with no consequences. Think of the Rodney King video in 1992. The author provides us with several more examples in his book. The police forces are above the law. The police departments over many long years have become immune and protective of their own.
Page 140
In the end, the law says that not only is no one responsible for the death of someone killed by a police officer, no one can be responsible.
This book is a strong indictment of the current black and white divide in the United States – and how police departments enforce that divide. Possibly one could also argue that this divide is increasingly between rich and poor – as the number of have-nots continues to grow in the United States.
*One statistic not mentioned by the author is the murder rate that decreased in New York City during the 1990s making it one of the safer cities in the United States in the 21st century.
The author provides us with a strong journalistic investigation of the before and then the aftermath of this event. It gives a strong indictment of racism and de facto segregation in the United States.
The concept of “Broken Windows" which the New York City police department adopted (along with other cities) had an idealistic beginning in the 1980's. It was - to simplify, a concept to clean up your neighborhoods; have police on the street (not in a patrol car) where they could interact with their fellow citizens. And where they could arrest or stop those who looked “suspicious”. This led to “Stop and Frisk” which applied to those who didn’t “fit in”. This eventually became an open season of oppressing minority groups – namely targeting black and Hispanic people.*
“Stop and Frisk” encouraged certain racist groups to become over-enthusiastic policemen – to outdo themselves, to meet arrest quotas. The role of the police becomes more of a borderland protection restricting where poor people and minority groups go. There were public strip searches. This, in my naïve mind, should never be done.
Page 303 (my book)
What happened to Garner spoke to the increasing desperation of white America to avoid having to ever see, much less speak to or live alongside, people like him.
Essentially this has been going on for hundreds of years under different guises – think of the Jim Crow era in the South. Police departments have a long history of infringing on the rights and dignity of black people without legal repercussions. Without having consequences simply encourages more of this transgressive behavior. The police are under an aura of protection with a bureaucracy that over the years becomes more and more effective at countering investigative inquiry and any attempt to restrict its power.
The author outlines the several layers of bureaucracy that encumbered any effort to bring Daniel Pantaleo to justice. For example, it is nearly impossible for the press or citizens to inquire into the evaluations, complaints, and records of a police officer. After all they are being payed by the tax-paying citizen and this should be made public, one would think.
The author tells us of the Grand Jury that exonerated Daniel Pantaleo of complicity in the death of Eric Garner. A Grand Jury is a preliminary evaluation before an actual trial to determine if there should indeed be a trial. The details of a Grand Jury, for legal reasons beyond me, cannot be made public. There was then an inquiry launched by various groups to obtain the details of the Grand Jury to determine the reasons why it failed to indict – this as well did not succeed.
Page 218-19
This case was not about fine legal abstractions but about brutal obvious reality. [James Meyerson, NAACP lawyer] argued that if the case had been about a white man choked to death by a black man over a cigarette while the black man’s friends watched and did nothing, the killer would have been indicted long ago… “the prosecutor would have convinced a grand jury, and in half a day, with the videotape, with the medical examiner’s report, and with some report saying chokeholds cause people to die and then the audio saying “I can’t breathe” would have gotten indictment for some form of homicide.”
There have been many cases of white police officers beating and/or mistreating black people with no consequences. Think of the Rodney King video in 1992. The author provides us with several more examples in his book. The police forces are above the law. The police departments over many long years have become immune and protective of their own.
Page 140
In the end, the law says that not only is no one responsible for the death of someone killed by a police officer, no one can be responsible.
This book is a strong indictment of the current black and white divide in the United States – and how police departments enforce that divide. Possibly one could also argue that this divide is increasingly between rich and poor – as the number of have-nots continues to grow in the United States.
*One statistic not mentioned by the author is the murder rate that decreased in New York City during the 1990s making it one of the safer cities in the United States in the 21st century.
July 26, 2020
This nonfiction book gives a full account of the Eric Garner who died while being arrested by the NYPD. Lots of details and background are given about Mr. Garner such as his previous non-violent run-ins with the law. He was well liked on the street and by his family. His death captured by a cellphone video is also discussed. I learned a lot more about what happened that day, which is what I wanted from the book.
December 16, 2017
I am generally a fan of Taibbi's writing and thinking and this book was good. It's not quite as good as the divide because it doesn't cover anything particularly new (for anyone who has been following these cases), but it is such an important perspective. I especially loved how he dug into the history of broken windows and the politics of New York and crime. This is the world from which Trump's bigotry spring. The last few chapters of the book show Taibbi at his best: connecting the dots of injustice, money, history, and institutions in his characteristically incisive prose.
November 26, 2019
Eric Garner comes alive one more time in Matt Taibbi’s searingly honest account of an unjust system. I kept hoping for a different outcome. I really did. I’m left to wonder how some of the people in this book sleep at night.
September 11, 2017
"A masterly narrative of urban America and a scathing indictment of the perverse incentives built into our penal system, I Can’t Breathe drills down into the particulars of one case to confront us with the human cost of our broken approach to dispensing criminal justice." from the publisher's website
Taibbi's book I Can't Breathe explains the evolution of discrimination justified by being 'tough on crime' and how it lead to the death of Eric Garner, which fueled the Black Lives Matter movement.
Random House sent me an email offering pre-approval to read I Can't Breathe by Matt Taibbi. I downloaded the book to check it out, and realized it was the perfect book to build upon other recent reads about justice and race, including Just Mercy by Bryon Stevenson, Detroit: 1967, Reading with Patrick by Michelle Kuo, and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
I had acquired a basic understanding that the justice system was inherently racist. Taibbi's thorough consideration of the death of Eric Garner explained the political and social pressures that changed police culture after overt institutional racism was pushed underground.
Taibbi presents a balanced portrait of a beloved family man who was deeply flawed, as we all are, but whom Taibbi came to truly like. Readers will connect to Eric, a bigger than life, eccentric character. Unemployable because of a prior conviction, Eric supports his family by creating a business selling 'loosies', black market cigarettes smuggled in from states with lower cigarette taxes and sold individually. Eric is jailed and fined over and over.
When Americans became worried about crime during the tumultuous 1970s politicians began offering promises to be 'tough on crime.' White Americans were afraid of urban African Americans.
In the 1990s, New York City led the way by pushing for increased arrests. Cops were to stop and frisk first to see if they could turn up anything to justify an arrest! People were targeted by color, attire, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, reaching for their pocket--but the real motivation was racism. Blacks and Hispanics in high-crime neighborhoods were targeted.
Cops publicly humiliated their victims by public cavity searches and the use of unnecessary brute force was common. The system protected the cops.
Garner stood out. He was big, he wore clothes that were literally falling apart, and he stood in the same place day after day. He had asthma. He had been looking poorly and was tired. He was robbed and beaten up, financially always struggling to support his family.
Garner was an easy catch for a cop who needed to meet his quota. He was stopped and searched hundreds of times and when cops discovered a few packs of cigarettes he would be arrested and his money confiscated.
Garner's son had just earned a scholarship to college, and Garner was the father of a new baby when he broke up a street fight. Cops who had been watching the fight arrested Garner even though he had not sold a cigarette all morning. Ramsey Orta saw the arrest and filmed it with his cellphone. When Garner countered that he had not done anything wrong and was not going to be arrested that day, four officers went after Garner and pushed him to the ground.
"I can't breathe," he said over and over. And then he stopped breathing and the cops did nothing.
Taibbi put Garner's death in perspective of how policing changed: instituting 'reasonable' suspicion as a validating a stop and frisk; the adoption of "Broken Windows" and the emphasis on policing as keeping 'order', creating a 'goal setting' culture; zero-tolerance policing and 'predictive policing'.
Groups rose up to challenge the discriminatory methods but had little success. Eric's daughter Erica Garner worked for justice for her father. Bureaucracy protected the cops and left the families of victims without justice. Orta's cell phone video made him a police target. Politicians got involved for personal attention. Protest groups arose demanding justice, including Black Lives Matter.
I am disgusted by how often I hear people counter Black Lives Matter with "all lives matter." That is true, but not all 'lives' are targeted because of color or where they live.
A few years back I visited a college friend living in Detroit. Driving home I was lost and tense. When I got to an overpass with no cars I sped up a bit and was pulled over by a cop.
The cop said, "don't say anything," and took my driver's license. He came back and said, "I will write this up so you don't have it on your record, but you will pay a fine." I wondered then what it was that caused him to do this? My clean driving record? And today I wonder, if I were a person of color, would he have searched my car and person looking for evidence to arrest me?
I have never felt so protected and cushioned by the accident of my color as I have after reading I Can't Breathe.
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
Taibbi's book I Can't Breathe explains the evolution of discrimination justified by being 'tough on crime' and how it lead to the death of Eric Garner, which fueled the Black Lives Matter movement.
Random House sent me an email offering pre-approval to read I Can't Breathe by Matt Taibbi. I downloaded the book to check it out, and realized it was the perfect book to build upon other recent reads about justice and race, including Just Mercy by Bryon Stevenson, Detroit: 1967, Reading with Patrick by Michelle Kuo, and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
I had acquired a basic understanding that the justice system was inherently racist. Taibbi's thorough consideration of the death of Eric Garner explained the political and social pressures that changed police culture after overt institutional racism was pushed underground.
Taibbi presents a balanced portrait of a beloved family man who was deeply flawed, as we all are, but whom Taibbi came to truly like. Readers will connect to Eric, a bigger than life, eccentric character. Unemployable because of a prior conviction, Eric supports his family by creating a business selling 'loosies', black market cigarettes smuggled in from states with lower cigarette taxes and sold individually. Eric is jailed and fined over and over.
When Americans became worried about crime during the tumultuous 1970s politicians began offering promises to be 'tough on crime.' White Americans were afraid of urban African Americans.
In the 1990s, New York City led the way by pushing for increased arrests. Cops were to stop and frisk first to see if they could turn up anything to justify an arrest! People were targeted by color, attire, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, reaching for their pocket--but the real motivation was racism. Blacks and Hispanics in high-crime neighborhoods were targeted.
Cops publicly humiliated their victims by public cavity searches and the use of unnecessary brute force was common. The system protected the cops.
Garner stood out. He was big, he wore clothes that were literally falling apart, and he stood in the same place day after day. He had asthma. He had been looking poorly and was tired. He was robbed and beaten up, financially always struggling to support his family.
Garner was an easy catch for a cop who needed to meet his quota. He was stopped and searched hundreds of times and when cops discovered a few packs of cigarettes he would be arrested and his money confiscated.
Garner's son had just earned a scholarship to college, and Garner was the father of a new baby when he broke up a street fight. Cops who had been watching the fight arrested Garner even though he had not sold a cigarette all morning. Ramsey Orta saw the arrest and filmed it with his cellphone. When Garner countered that he had not done anything wrong and was not going to be arrested that day, four officers went after Garner and pushed him to the ground.
"I can't breathe," he said over and over. And then he stopped breathing and the cops did nothing.
Taibbi put Garner's death in perspective of how policing changed: instituting 'reasonable' suspicion as a validating a stop and frisk; the adoption of "Broken Windows" and the emphasis on policing as keeping 'order', creating a 'goal setting' culture; zero-tolerance policing and 'predictive policing'.
Groups rose up to challenge the discriminatory methods but had little success. Eric's daughter Erica Garner worked for justice for her father. Bureaucracy protected the cops and left the families of victims without justice. Orta's cell phone video made him a police target. Politicians got involved for personal attention. Protest groups arose demanding justice, including Black Lives Matter.
I am disgusted by how often I hear people counter Black Lives Matter with "all lives matter." That is true, but not all 'lives' are targeted because of color or where they live.
A few years back I visited a college friend living in Detroit. Driving home I was lost and tense. When I got to an overpass with no cars I sped up a bit and was pulled over by a cop.
The cop said, "don't say anything," and took my driver's license. He came back and said, "I will write this up so you don't have it on your record, but you will pay a fine." I wondered then what it was that caused him to do this? My clean driving record? And today I wonder, if I were a person of color, would he have searched my car and person looking for evidence to arrest me?
I have never felt so protected and cushioned by the accident of my color as I have after reading I Can't Breathe.
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
November 26, 2017
Whenever the issue of police brutality arises, the question of appropriate and proportionate use of force always crops up. One side will argue that it was unjustified, excessive; and even worse, racially motivated. The other side will argue that it was totally justified, necessary; and what more, a necessary precaution self-inflicted by the 'culture' of violence perpetuated by the racial demographic involved. If you, like me, are unsure of which argument contains more truth (there are, after all, only degrees of truth and no absolutes in matters like these), then you need to read this book. There are many examples cited (apart from the Eric Garner case) which will cast an illuminating light on this question. An important read.
Note: The sections on court proceedings tend to drag a bit but are useful in providing a picture of how the governmental and political machinery come together to bury cases like this.
Note: The sections on court proceedings tend to drag a bit but are useful in providing a picture of how the governmental and political machinery come together to bury cases like this.
December 18, 2017
3.5. This book succeeds in giving the reader a fuller picture of Eric Garner - his personality, his life, his family, and his troubles. This book is also successful at showing the reader why Eric Garner died that day: the intersection of broken windows policing, stop-and-frisk, the statistics/numbers-focused NYPD, lack of job opportunity, gentrification, etc. The writing is approachable and conversational. During some parts on audio I dozed off (my favorite parts were learning about Eric and his family) and I also kept thinking about the author and my supporting him. (Even just today he was written about on the Washington Post.)
June 1, 2020
On July 17, 2014, a forty-three-year-old black man named Eric Garner died outside a Staten Island store after police put him in what has been described as an illegal choke hold. His crime? Peddling tax-free cigarettes to commuters near a transportation terminal. His last words? “I can’t breathe,” which became the title of political journalist Matt Taibbi’s 2017 book on the subject.
I CAN’T BREATHE is not a work of mystery, unless the “mystery” is why the cops would come down so hard on a low-level tax cheat and leave his customers alone. Onlookers heard Eric Garner’s dying words and a bystander equipped with a video camera was there to catch them. Nonetheless, for Garner’s family to pursue justice became a kind of impossible dream: first the Staten Island cops were shuffled around and made hard to find, then Garner’s family faced a thick blue wall of inaction. Since the legal works fell into two parts -- criminal and civil -- the Garners spent a lot of money and time trying to make sense of things, especially since the video tape made it clear how and by whom Eric Garner was killed. In essence Taibbi has to tell the same story twice, in two different forms.
Taibbi’s book is typically well-written but lacks the mordant quality of some other of his books like GRIFTOPIA or HATE, INC. But what does come through is the absolute unfairness the Garners received, and the unnecessary brutality that killed patriarch Eric. The Garners were not low-class or trashy people but hard-working people who turned their talents to a variety of low-paid jobs, yet never received justice.
Will this bigotry ever cease? On May 25 of 2020 George Floyd, 46, was suffocated by a policeman’s knee to the neck on a Minneapolis street. His last words: “I can’t breathe.” Once again, there’s a video record of the atrocity.
I CAN’T BREATHE is not a work of mystery, unless the “mystery” is why the cops would come down so hard on a low-level tax cheat and leave his customers alone. Onlookers heard Eric Garner’s dying words and a bystander equipped with a video camera was there to catch them. Nonetheless, for Garner’s family to pursue justice became a kind of impossible dream: first the Staten Island cops were shuffled around and made hard to find, then Garner’s family faced a thick blue wall of inaction. Since the legal works fell into two parts -- criminal and civil -- the Garners spent a lot of money and time trying to make sense of things, especially since the video tape made it clear how and by whom Eric Garner was killed. In essence Taibbi has to tell the same story twice, in two different forms.
Taibbi’s book is typically well-written but lacks the mordant quality of some other of his books like GRIFTOPIA or HATE, INC. But what does come through is the absolute unfairness the Garners received, and the unnecessary brutality that killed patriarch Eric. The Garners were not low-class or trashy people but hard-working people who turned their talents to a variety of low-paid jobs, yet never received justice.
Will this bigotry ever cease? On May 25 of 2020 George Floyd, 46, was suffocated by a policeman’s knee to the neck on a Minneapolis street. His last words: “I can’t breathe.” Once again, there’s a video record of the atrocity.
Read
October 27, 2017Matt Taibbi has always struck me as someone I would probably not be able to stand in person. He always came across arrogant and self-absorbed, a real “dudebro” type. His writing has always been hit or miss for me, usually a miss when he injects too much of himself into the story he’s writing. I requested an advanced copy of this book because of the subject matter without paying attention to who wrote it at the time. The Eric Garner killing and the subsequent “investigation” (I use the word loosely) into it are important to the current state of our country and are indicative of the ongoing racial problems and police brutality we deal with on a daily basis. That said, I thought I could work around Taibbi’s presence and dig into the book. Over the last couple of days, news has surfaced about Taibbi’s personal behavior and his own confessions and admissions of misogyny, sexual harassment, and his dismissal, acceptance, and encouragement of rape. He and his co-author admit to such in their book, The Exile, about their time in Russia. Details can be found here. Please be warned that the language at the link can be extremely triggering.
So I’m left torn here. I read this book long before I was aware of the attitudes and behavior of Taibbi. The book was well-written and informative. It covers important information on the case, the entire culture surrounding the NYPD, and much more. I can’t, however, write a review praising a book and encouraging anyone to support an author that not only encourages the behavior he has, but brags about his own involvement in sexual harassment and assault. I’m sure there are or will be many other books written about Garner and the hundreds of others killed by police throughout the country. Buy literally anyone else’s. I’m removing the original star rating on this book and will leave it unrated here on Goodreads. I would hope that his publisher, agent, and employer would reconsider their relationship with someone who so gleefully exhibits the horrific behavior he's admitted to.
So I’m left torn here. I read this book long before I was aware of the attitudes and behavior of Taibbi. The book was well-written and informative. It covers important information on the case, the entire culture surrounding the NYPD, and much more. I can’t, however, write a review praising a book and encouraging anyone to support an author that not only encourages the behavior he has, but brags about his own involvement in sexual harassment and assault. I’m sure there are or will be many other books written about Garner and the hundreds of others killed by police throughout the country. Buy literally anyone else’s. I’m removing the original star rating on this book and will leave it unrated here on Goodreads. I would hope that his publisher, agent, and employer would reconsider their relationship with someone who so gleefully exhibits the horrific behavior he's admitted to.
January 19, 2018
"The lengths we went to as a society to crush someone of such modest ambitions - Garner's big dream was to someday sit down at work - were awesome to contemplate. What happened to Garner spoke to the increasing desperation of white America to avoid having to even see, much less speak or live alongside, people like him. Half a century after the civil rights movement, white America does not want to know this man. They don't want him walking in their neighborhoods. They want him moved off the corner. Even white liberals seem to, deep down inside, if the policies they advocate and the individual choices they make are any indication."
This book was a whole lot to process. I went in thinking it was primarily going to be about Eric Garner and the events leading up to his death, but it went much deeper than that. It's evident we have a problem in this country, and Taibbi does an excellent job at putting his journalism skills on display by examining the NYPD. This book was frustrating, sad, fascinating and enlightening all in one. 5 stars
This book was a whole lot to process. I went in thinking it was primarily going to be about Eric Garner and the events leading up to his death, but it went much deeper than that. It's evident we have a problem in this country, and Taibbi does an excellent job at putting his journalism skills on display by examining the NYPD. This book was frustrating, sad, fascinating and enlightening all in one. 5 stars
December 13, 2017
Every now and then a book hits me so hard that it takes me a while before I can review it. I need time to find the words. It's been a couple of weeks, and I'm still searching for those words.
To start, I can say simply that this is one of the best narrative nonfiction books I've ever read. Matt Taibbi's writing style has such an ease to it, as if the writing took no effort, when I know the exact opposite is true. Great writing like this takes a whole lot of effort.
This book reads like the best thriller novel. We get to know the people involved. We see them there, in their daily lives. We witness the best and the worst of their behavior. I felt what it was like to be a poor black person in a city full of stereotypes. I was on edge, saddened, and intensely horrified.
I read a lot of sociology and true crime, so I didn't come into this book unaware. But, oh my, the things I still didn't know or understand just blew my mind. I mean, a strip search on the side of a busy city street, just because you happen to be a young black male in a crime-ridden area? A strip search in public, with no probable cause beyond your skin color? I still can't quite grasp that this was (is?) happening in a so-called free country. And I wonder exactly how long this would be allowed if young, white people were being snatched up and strip-searched on the side of a busy city street. I could almost guarantee you that it would never even happen at all.
I truly believe everybody should read this book. Crime is not some sort of disease afflicting mainly young, black males. And when an entire segment of our population is treated with disdain by cops and local government, when those people are afforded less rights than the rest of us simply because they were born in the wrong place with the wrong skin color, then you are creating the very thing you're trying to avoid: angry young men who feel marginalized and disrespected. And, honestly, can you blame them?
With this book, Matt Taibbi gives us the truth of Eric Garner's life and death. He shows us the streets where Eric spent his life and the people he interacted with each day. Taibbi's telling of this story honors Garner with the kind of respect he was never given in life.
*I was provided with a review copy by the publisher, via Amazon Vine, in exchange for my honest review.*
To start, I can say simply that this is one of the best narrative nonfiction books I've ever read. Matt Taibbi's writing style has such an ease to it, as if the writing took no effort, when I know the exact opposite is true. Great writing like this takes a whole lot of effort.
This book reads like the best thriller novel. We get to know the people involved. We see them there, in their daily lives. We witness the best and the worst of their behavior. I felt what it was like to be a poor black person in a city full of stereotypes. I was on edge, saddened, and intensely horrified.
I read a lot of sociology and true crime, so I didn't come into this book unaware. But, oh my, the things I still didn't know or understand just blew my mind. I mean, a strip search on the side of a busy city street, just because you happen to be a young black male in a crime-ridden area? A strip search in public, with no probable cause beyond your skin color? I still can't quite grasp that this was (is?) happening in a so-called free country. And I wonder exactly how long this would be allowed if young, white people were being snatched up and strip-searched on the side of a busy city street. I could almost guarantee you that it would never even happen at all.
I truly believe everybody should read this book. Crime is not some sort of disease afflicting mainly young, black males. And when an entire segment of our population is treated with disdain by cops and local government, when those people are afforded less rights than the rest of us simply because they were born in the wrong place with the wrong skin color, then you are creating the very thing you're trying to avoid: angry young men who feel marginalized and disrespected. And, honestly, can you blame them?
With this book, Matt Taibbi gives us the truth of Eric Garner's life and death. He shows us the streets where Eric spent his life and the people he interacted with each day. Taibbi's telling of this story honors Garner with the kind of respect he was never given in life.
*I was provided with a review copy by the publisher, via Amazon Vine, in exchange for my honest review.*
November 25, 2017
Remarkable reporting on the life and death of Eric Garner and the cast of characters involved in his murder. The story is riveting and pulls the reader along. Most important of all, Taibbi’s portrayal of Eric Garner is meticulously honest and thoroughly humanizing!
On the political front, the degree to which the entire law enforcement complex, from police to judges, DAs to politicians, is rotten to the core, is so clearly portrayed.
On the political front, the degree to which the entire law enforcement complex, from police to judges, DAs to politicians, is rotten to the core, is so clearly portrayed.
November 20, 2017
It's hard to rate a book that leaves you feeling devastated…
Any rounding down is because I've read other Matt Taibbi books I thought were better constructed.
Any rounding down is because I've read other Matt Taibbi books I thought were better constructed.
November 2, 2017
I Can't Breathe proved to be a very difficult read. Garner's death is certainly not the only important one, but it did help create talk and start a movement. It's deeply disturbing to hear how some of these situations went down and the aftermath. Selling loose cigarettes/packs for a cheaper amount (while considered 'illegal') doesn't seem to warrant the outrageous bail amounts or jail time and eventual death by chokehold. I feel a lot of despair for our country and our legal system after reading this book. I'm embarrassed to be part of the (white) human race sometimes. I fear for this presidency, and the hate it has brought already and the fear. This book was very real written and researched. I found myself noting many lines in my kindle and sharing them. This book gave a lot of insight and it will continue to affect me. Of course my feelings do not even compare to those of the ones affected and living this nightmare...we can do better than this America. We need to do better than this.
January 25, 2018
“Try to imagine a world where there isn’t a vast unspoken consensus that black men are inherently scary, and most of these police assaults would play in the media like spontaneous attacks of madness. Instead, they’re sold as battle scenes from an occupation story, where a quick trigger finger while patrolling the planet of a violent alien race is easy to understand.”
I received an advance review copy of I Can’t Breathe: A Killing On Bay Street, courtesy of Random House and Net Galley. I had expected this civil rights title to be a good read but also to be anticlimactic, coming out as it did just after publications by literary lions like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Angela Davis. I am surprised and gratified to see that Taibbi, a journalist for Rolling Stone, holds his own quite capably. The title is for sale, and if you care about justice and an end to cop violence in the US, then you should get it and read it.
Many readers will recognize the title, which constitutes Eric Gardner’s last words and became a rallying cry for protests that spanned the globe. Why would any cop, especially one not acting alone, find it necessary to put an elderly man, a large person but not a violent one, in a chokehold over what was, after all, a misdemeanor at most? Taibbi takes us down the terrible urban rabbit hole, deftly segueing from Garner’s story, the events that led up to his death and the legal and political fight that took place afterward, to the cop killings of others, and the bizarre, farcical prosecution that takes place in the unlikely event that a cop is ever charged with having unlawfully killed another person.
Though my own life is free from this type of harassment and though I benefit from White privilege and have done so since birth, I found it hard to breathe myself as I read Garner’s story, and the behind-the-scenes machinations that result in the maintenance of the status quo. And I trembled, and still do, for the Black men in my family.
I think many people over the age of 40 understand that the attacks we see publicized online, one by one, Black boys and men that have done either nothing wrong or committed a minor offense that most Caucasian people would never be stopped for, have been taking place for a very long time. What we didn’t have was proof; what we didn’t have was the long view that allows us to see into cities, rural areas, and small towns in America such as Ferguson, where Michael Brown was killed. And there’s one other thing: we didn’t have to look at it before if it wasn’t happening in our own community, our own neighborhood. Even those of us with racially mixed families didn’t see the scope of it. Some would prefer not to know.
Here’s Taibbi’s take on how it unspooled:
“The civil rights movement ended in a kind of negotiated compromise. Black Americans were granted legal equality, while white America was allowed to nurture and maintain an illusion of innocence, even as it continued to live in almost complete separation. Black America always saw the continuing schism, but white America has traditionally been free to ignore and be untroubled by it and to believe it had reached the “postracial” stage of its otherwise proud history. That was until cell phones and the internet came along. When the murder of Eric Garner hit the headlines, it at first seemed to lift the veil.”
Taibbi’s smooth narrative and expert pacing doesn’t make this any easy book to read; nothing can. If it’s easy, you’re not paying attention. But if we ignore Eric Gardner, Michael and Trayvon and Freddie and Sandra and all the rest, we are complicit in their deaths. Highly recommended, even at full jacket price.
I received an advance review copy of I Can’t Breathe: A Killing On Bay Street, courtesy of Random House and Net Galley. I had expected this civil rights title to be a good read but also to be anticlimactic, coming out as it did just after publications by literary lions like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Angela Davis. I am surprised and gratified to see that Taibbi, a journalist for Rolling Stone, holds his own quite capably. The title is for sale, and if you care about justice and an end to cop violence in the US, then you should get it and read it.
Many readers will recognize the title, which constitutes Eric Gardner’s last words and became a rallying cry for protests that spanned the globe. Why would any cop, especially one not acting alone, find it necessary to put an elderly man, a large person but not a violent one, in a chokehold over what was, after all, a misdemeanor at most? Taibbi takes us down the terrible urban rabbit hole, deftly segueing from Garner’s story, the events that led up to his death and the legal and political fight that took place afterward, to the cop killings of others, and the bizarre, farcical prosecution that takes place in the unlikely event that a cop is ever charged with having unlawfully killed another person.
Though my own life is free from this type of harassment and though I benefit from White privilege and have done so since birth, I found it hard to breathe myself as I read Garner’s story, and the behind-the-scenes machinations that result in the maintenance of the status quo. And I trembled, and still do, for the Black men in my family.
I think many people over the age of 40 understand that the attacks we see publicized online, one by one, Black boys and men that have done either nothing wrong or committed a minor offense that most Caucasian people would never be stopped for, have been taking place for a very long time. What we didn’t have was proof; what we didn’t have was the long view that allows us to see into cities, rural areas, and small towns in America such as Ferguson, where Michael Brown was killed. And there’s one other thing: we didn’t have to look at it before if it wasn’t happening in our own community, our own neighborhood. Even those of us with racially mixed families didn’t see the scope of it. Some would prefer not to know.
Here’s Taibbi’s take on how it unspooled:
“The civil rights movement ended in a kind of negotiated compromise. Black Americans were granted legal equality, while white America was allowed to nurture and maintain an illusion of innocence, even as it continued to live in almost complete separation. Black America always saw the continuing schism, but white America has traditionally been free to ignore and be untroubled by it and to believe it had reached the “postracial” stage of its otherwise proud history. That was until cell phones and the internet came along. When the murder of Eric Garner hit the headlines, it at first seemed to lift the veil.”
Taibbi’s smooth narrative and expert pacing doesn’t make this any easy book to read; nothing can. If it’s easy, you’re not paying attention. But if we ignore Eric Gardner, Michael and Trayvon and Freddie and Sandra and all the rest, we are complicit in their deaths. Highly recommended, even at full jacket price.
August 22, 2020
I Can't Breathe talks about the life and death of Eric Garner. Eric Garner was an unarmed black man who was killed by New York polices officers in 2014. Eric Garner was not a model citizen, but he did not deserve to die. Garner was a hustler, he did what he had to do in order to provide for his family. Mostly, he sold cigarettes on the street corner that he would drive down to other states to get.
He always wore sweatpants that were dirty and everyone knew Eric.
It feels like we as black people are stuck in the system of shoot first ask questions later, or choke first and ask questions later. The title of this book rung true again at the beginning of this summer with the death of George Floyd. He was the straw that broke the camel's back. People have come out in droves from all racial backgrounds to march and protest for black lives. Yes, all lives matter, including the lives of police officers and other ethnic groups, but we as black people are constantly treated as if we are not worth of normal everyday things in this life.
This book really gave me insight to the corruption in the New York police department.
He always wore sweatpants that were dirty and everyone knew Eric.
It feels like we as black people are stuck in the system of shoot first ask questions later, or choke first and ask questions later. The title of this book rung true again at the beginning of this summer with the death of George Floyd. He was the straw that broke the camel's back. People have come out in droves from all racial backgrounds to march and protest for black lives. Yes, all lives matter, including the lives of police officers and other ethnic groups, but we as black people are constantly treated as if we are not worth of normal everyday things in this life.
This book really gave me insight to the corruption in the New York police department.
August 4, 2017
Although I've read quite a few books dealing with unjustified killings of mostly black men, I'm still shocked at how the systemic racism inherent in the criminal justice system conspires to twice victimize those who are unfortunate enough to get caught up in the system. First by death, and then by the denial of justice.Matt Taibbi takes a look here at the killing of Eric Garner who was basically choked to death and despite the whole world seeing a man saying " I can't breathe" eleven times no one has been held responsible for his death. What Taibbi does in this book is what the media failed to do in the aftermath of Garner's killing. He humanizes the person that is Eric Garner. He extensively talks to family members, friends, shop owners, customers, other hustlers and constructs for the reader what life for Eric Garner looked like on a daily basis, and how all the forces of his past, plus the politics and the history of policing coalesced that fateful day, July 17, 2014.
"Garner was caught in the crossfire of a thousand narratives that had little or nothing to do with him personally. Everything from a police commissioner’s mania for statistics to the opportunistic avarice of real estate developers had brought him in contact with police that day."
He writes with a confident knowing prose and portions of the book have the feel of a novel as he details the area and various characters in and around Staten Island, where Eric Garner spent most of his time. The bureaucracy that keeps bodies moving through the criminal justice system is put under a microscope here and will have readers shaking their heads as to how easily it is to ruin someone's life because no one truly cares about what is going on and why the corruption is allowed to go unabated. Taibbi certainly makes it clear that some lives are valued over others and all the data coming out of the NYC police department, court and jail back this up.
Pedro Serrano is an officer that decided to tape his superiors and his evidence was used in the lawsuit to end the practice of stop and frisk. Some of his comments and taped conversations are chilling and give excellent insight into how a culture of fear and loathing is created in the average police officer. He was actually told by a deputy inspector to stop young black men.
“The problem was what?” McCormack said. “Male blacks. And I told you at roll call, I have no problem telling you this, male blacks, fourteen to twenty, twenty-one. I said this at roll call.”
These kinds of inclusions along with looks at the charging and negotiating of crimes process, the district attorney and defense attorney chess games makes this book hum along. By the books' end you will think of Eric Garner differently and hopefully that difference will forever change how you understand the "system."
Matt Taibbi started out to write a policy book with the Garner killing as central to talk about how models of policing, like stop and frisk can go horribly wrong and the effects of that. He ended up with a very different book, because when he got to Bay St., in Staten Island, NY and begun talking to people he developed a real liking for Eric, and the focus of the project became flushing out the story of who Eric Garner was. And by altering the course of this book hoped to change the impression of Eric Garner from political symbol to human being who was loved and appreciated by friends and family like. I think readers will be pleased by Taibbi's decision to change current and will agree that he has succeeded in making the impression that he ultimately sought. Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for providing an advanced ecopy. Book publishes Oct. 24, 2017
"Garner was caught in the crossfire of a thousand narratives that had little or nothing to do with him personally. Everything from a police commissioner’s mania for statistics to the opportunistic avarice of real estate developers had brought him in contact with police that day."
He writes with a confident knowing prose and portions of the book have the feel of a novel as he details the area and various characters in and around Staten Island, where Eric Garner spent most of his time. The bureaucracy that keeps bodies moving through the criminal justice system is put under a microscope here and will have readers shaking their heads as to how easily it is to ruin someone's life because no one truly cares about what is going on and why the corruption is allowed to go unabated. Taibbi certainly makes it clear that some lives are valued over others and all the data coming out of the NYC police department, court and jail back this up.
Pedro Serrano is an officer that decided to tape his superiors and his evidence was used in the lawsuit to end the practice of stop and frisk. Some of his comments and taped conversations are chilling and give excellent insight into how a culture of fear and loathing is created in the average police officer. He was actually told by a deputy inspector to stop young black men.
“The problem was what?” McCormack said. “Male blacks. And I told you at roll call, I have no problem telling you this, male blacks, fourteen to twenty, twenty-one. I said this at roll call.”
These kinds of inclusions along with looks at the charging and negotiating of crimes process, the district attorney and defense attorney chess games makes this book hum along. By the books' end you will think of Eric Garner differently and hopefully that difference will forever change how you understand the "system."
Matt Taibbi started out to write a policy book with the Garner killing as central to talk about how models of policing, like stop and frisk can go horribly wrong and the effects of that. He ended up with a very different book, because when he got to Bay St., in Staten Island, NY and begun talking to people he developed a real liking for Eric, and the focus of the project became flushing out the story of who Eric Garner was. And by altering the course of this book hoped to change the impression of Eric Garner from political symbol to human being who was loved and appreciated by friends and family like. I think readers will be pleased by Taibbi's decision to change current and will agree that he has succeeded in making the impression that he ultimately sought. Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for providing an advanced ecopy. Book publishes Oct. 24, 2017
June 24, 2020
In the state of Oregon, there lives a honey fungus that measures about 3.5 square miles. It's a monstrous organism that lives mostly underground but occasionally sends up embassies to the air in the form of those little, tiny, scattered, harmless toadstools that are so common in a damp wood. In other words, this massive force lies invisible around those who tread over it, unseen except for those few, seemingly insignificant caps that peep harmlessly up from the soil. And except for the death, too. Yes, for this fungus is a parasite that kills those plants with no natural protection against it. And to a casual observer, this death might seem normal, natural, just another example of the drama of a life reaching its inevitable dénouement. But it's not.
At least, it's not more or less normal or natural than the death of Eric Garner at the hands of the NYPD. As a black male -- and a physically imposing one, at that -- Garner had no natural protection against the racism of the society in which he lived. The racism that -- after freeing the slaves and having a Civil Rights movement and electing a black president, after all -- most white Americans are desperate to pretend is an extirpated relic of the past, something to be learned about from museum exhibits and Civil War documentaries and M.L.K. Day observances; certainly not something that you can catch an authentic glimpse of in the wild. And those occasional little signs, those few, tiny, scattered, harmless incidents of racism that every white person has seen or heard in their own lives? Well... that's all they are, just harmless incidents, not indicative of some larger, malignant whole, surely.
If there is one thing that Taibbi's book does well, it follows the path of that inveterate American parasite -- racism -- from one of its small, visible eruptions above the surface, down through dark passages until the reader realizes that s/he is just going round and round within a Leviathan that has its tentacles in every aspect of American life, like Jonah walking around inside the whale, looking for a way out. But there is no way out. There isn't supposed to be. It was specifically designed not to have one.
This, to me (a white, American male), is the real takeaway of this book. This look at something that has existed all around me for my entire life, something that influenced my society in large and small strokes that can never be quantified in any meaningful way, even if its full extent was within our mental and emotional grasp. Being able to see this monster that I was never meant to see because, under normal circumstances, it would never come for me is my lesson. And now that I've seen it, not only I can never forget it, but that inability to forget needs to inform my actions in the future. I owe it to myself, and to my fellow Americans.
E PLURIBUS UNUM.
Not yet, but hopefully we'll be a little closer tomorrow. And a little closer still the day after that. I Can't Breathe is a book short on hope, and with good reason. But as I write this, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, I look around see small but important changes beginning to take place... people not just absent-mindedly pulling up toadstools, but digging down and searching for the cause. I hope we won't look away anymore.
At least, it's not more or less normal or natural than the death of Eric Garner at the hands of the NYPD. As a black male -- and a physically imposing one, at that -- Garner had no natural protection against the racism of the society in which he lived. The racism that -- after freeing the slaves and having a Civil Rights movement and electing a black president, after all -- most white Americans are desperate to pretend is an extirpated relic of the past, something to be learned about from museum exhibits and Civil War documentaries and M.L.K. Day observances; certainly not something that you can catch an authentic glimpse of in the wild. And those occasional little signs, those few, tiny, scattered, harmless incidents of racism that every white person has seen or heard in their own lives? Well... that's all they are, just harmless incidents, not indicative of some larger, malignant whole, surely.
If there is one thing that Taibbi's book does well, it follows the path of that inveterate American parasite -- racism -- from one of its small, visible eruptions above the surface, down through dark passages until the reader realizes that s/he is just going round and round within a Leviathan that has its tentacles in every aspect of American life, like Jonah walking around inside the whale, looking for a way out. But there is no way out. There isn't supposed to be. It was specifically designed not to have one.
This, to me (a white, American male), is the real takeaway of this book. This look at something that has existed all around me for my entire life, something that influenced my society in large and small strokes that can never be quantified in any meaningful way, even if its full extent was within our mental and emotional grasp. Being able to see this monster that I was never meant to see because, under normal circumstances, it would never come for me is my lesson. And now that I've seen it, not only I can never forget it, but that inability to forget needs to inform my actions in the future. I owe it to myself, and to my fellow Americans.
E PLURIBUS UNUM.
Not yet, but hopefully we'll be a little closer tomorrow. And a little closer still the day after that. I Can't Breathe is a book short on hope, and with good reason. But as I write this, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, I look around see small but important changes beginning to take place... people not just absent-mindedly pulling up toadstools, but digging down and searching for the cause. I hope we won't look away anymore.
December 17, 2017
A thorough book about Eric Garner, his family and friends,and untimely murder. Includes interview with his daughter Erica, the guy (Ramsey Orta) who filmed the infamous video, DA, judges, cops and politicians. But the most despicable case was Officer Daniel Pantaleo who murdered Garner and got off scot free. Even worse, he has one of the most violent records as an NYPD Staten Island officer and still continues to be an abusive cop today. The corrupt criminal justice system must be brought to its knees. As the saying goes, If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. We have to take action to stop this corruption.
Now.
Now.
September 14, 2018
There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.
- Ernest Hemingway
Before I start with the review, let me tell you who Eric Garner was. Eric Garner was a 40 something African-American who was constantly penalized for having a skin tone that has, for centuries, been at the receiving end of brutal violence, slavery, and discrimination. Garner was a resident of Staten Island, New York and every day he got by without being a victimized for who he was or what he ‘did or did not do’, was a decent day. This book is about the short life of Eric Garner and the atrocities committed in the name of race.
A piece of journalistic brilliance based on the homicide of Eric Garner, “I can’t breathe” - the last words uttered in a moment of desperation, seconds before Garner drew his last breath, became synonymous with the movement against racial discrimination and police violence. Matt Taibbi writes this non-fiction in an almost story-like fashion, that keeps the readers engaged. The book is detailed with various instances of racial profiling and police violence that get you thinking about the many lives that have been affected by it for centuries now.
Matt divides the book into three parts: The events that led to the day Eric Garner was killed, the death of Eric Garner, and what transpired post this tragic day. In the first part, he describes what forms the basis of racial discrimination, the ‘Broken Windows’ concept that was used by the New York Police Department (NYPD), and the reason Garner was targeted on multiple occasions, some of which were far from criminal activities.
In the second part, he describes the forbidden chokehold performed by officer Daniel Pantaleo on Garner that ultimately led to the already breathless Garner drawing his last breath. Your heart goes out to Garner, whose hopeless cries in a moment of despair still haunt those who witnessed the brutality. In the final part, he describes the case against officer Pantaleo, the vested interests of politicians, and the lives of Garner’s family and friends that have changed forever.
The book nudges you to reconsider the way we treat those different from us. It is a wake-up call, in fact, it is a wake-up scream! Personally, I was too emotionally invested in the book. It was very detailed and it wasn’t an easy read either. But was it worth it? Yes!
As i conclude my review, I leave you with a song written by Garner’s daughter, Erica, that was sung during the protests that followed his death.
I can hear my father crying, “I can’t breathe”
Calling out the violence of the racist police
We ain’t gonna stop, till the people are free
We ain’t gonna stop, till the people are free
- Ernest Hemingway
Before I start with the review, let me tell you who Eric Garner was. Eric Garner was a 40 something African-American who was constantly penalized for having a skin tone that has, for centuries, been at the receiving end of brutal violence, slavery, and discrimination. Garner was a resident of Staten Island, New York and every day he got by without being a victimized for who he was or what he ‘did or did not do’, was a decent day. This book is about the short life of Eric Garner and the atrocities committed in the name of race.
A piece of journalistic brilliance based on the homicide of Eric Garner, “I can’t breathe” - the last words uttered in a moment of desperation, seconds before Garner drew his last breath, became synonymous with the movement against racial discrimination and police violence. Matt Taibbi writes this non-fiction in an almost story-like fashion, that keeps the readers engaged. The book is detailed with various instances of racial profiling and police violence that get you thinking about the many lives that have been affected by it for centuries now.
Matt divides the book into three parts: The events that led to the day Eric Garner was killed, the death of Eric Garner, and what transpired post this tragic day. In the first part, he describes what forms the basis of racial discrimination, the ‘Broken Windows’ concept that was used by the New York Police Department (NYPD), and the reason Garner was targeted on multiple occasions, some of which were far from criminal activities.
In the second part, he describes the forbidden chokehold performed by officer Daniel Pantaleo on Garner that ultimately led to the already breathless Garner drawing his last breath. Your heart goes out to Garner, whose hopeless cries in a moment of despair still haunt those who witnessed the brutality. In the final part, he describes the case against officer Pantaleo, the vested interests of politicians, and the lives of Garner’s family and friends that have changed forever.
The book nudges you to reconsider the way we treat those different from us. It is a wake-up call, in fact, it is a wake-up scream! Personally, I was too emotionally invested in the book. It was very detailed and it wasn’t an easy read either. But was it worth it? Yes!
As i conclude my review, I leave you with a song written by Garner’s daughter, Erica, that was sung during the protests that followed his death.
I can hear my father crying, “I can’t breathe”
Calling out the violence of the racist police
We ain’t gonna stop, till the people are free
We ain’t gonna stop, till the people are free
January 19, 2018
The first time I'd ever heard the name Eric Garner was this past winter while I was listening to the podcast "Fresh Air". I think I only got past the introduction of Mr. Taibbi and how his story regarding a brutal killing of the man in Statin Island evolved into his book. I was instantly hooked, I quickly hit the stop button and saved the podcast, so I could listen to it after I had read this book. At the time that this crime had taken place, I had already shut down the media because there was so much unrest in our country that I couldn't take anymore.
I'm a fan of non-fiction that deals with social issues and this was one of the best books in the genre that I've read in a long time. Mr. Taibbi brought Eric Garner back to life for me, I wasn't already saturated with the media regarding this case. I had no preconceived idea about the man or crime itself. I was transformed back a few years in time to this little small area where Mr. Garner was out on the street trying to scratch out a living for his family.
Mr. Taibbi did an awesome job in describing the climate in New York City during the past several years as well as the entire country. It was appalling to read about the super aggressive Stop and Frisk policies to singling out certain individuals who are just trying to make a living, a hard one at that. In many agencies, if an officer uses the chokehold its grounds for immediate dismissal. It was introduced back before officers had other means to subdue a combative subject. Mr. Garner was not by any means combative, this officer was wrong on so many counts.
I wish that I could see reform in the future, we need it regarding our criminal justice system, from mass incarceration to low-level victimless crimes. I’m afraid it doesn’t look like it’s moving in that direction, at least not anytime soon.
Mr. Taibbi nailed it when he brought up the new condos that were being built where Mr. Garner was killed. It's so sad to see these poor people get displaced either by harassment by city officials or their homes literally get torn down around them. When a city decides to rejuvenate an area that has fallen into a state of disrepair there is no stopping them, the people who lived in the rat-infested slums beforehand be damned. They want to wipe the slate clean, put on a pretty face so they can raise the tax brackets.
This book lived up to everything I thought it would and more. The humanistic approach to the life of Eric Garner and his family was extremely powerful.
Disclosure: I received a copy of this e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.
I'm a fan of non-fiction that deals with social issues and this was one of the best books in the genre that I've read in a long time. Mr. Taibbi brought Eric Garner back to life for me, I wasn't already saturated with the media regarding this case. I had no preconceived idea about the man or crime itself. I was transformed back a few years in time to this little small area where Mr. Garner was out on the street trying to scratch out a living for his family.
Mr. Taibbi did an awesome job in describing the climate in New York City during the past several years as well as the entire country. It was appalling to read about the super aggressive Stop and Frisk policies to singling out certain individuals who are just trying to make a living, a hard one at that. In many agencies, if an officer uses the chokehold its grounds for immediate dismissal. It was introduced back before officers had other means to subdue a combative subject. Mr. Garner was not by any means combative, this officer was wrong on so many counts.
I wish that I could see reform in the future, we need it regarding our criminal justice system, from mass incarceration to low-level victimless crimes. I’m afraid it doesn’t look like it’s moving in that direction, at least not anytime soon.
Mr. Taibbi nailed it when he brought up the new condos that were being built where Mr. Garner was killed. It's so sad to see these poor people get displaced either by harassment by city officials or their homes literally get torn down around them. When a city decides to rejuvenate an area that has fallen into a state of disrepair there is no stopping them, the people who lived in the rat-infested slums beforehand be damned. They want to wipe the slate clean, put on a pretty face so they can raise the tax brackets.
This book lived up to everything I thought it would and more. The humanistic approach to the life of Eric Garner and his family was extremely powerful.
Disclosure: I received a copy of this e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.
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