Breathe, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

December 6, 2014 Martha Thomases 3 Comments

This was the last straw.

A grand jury in Staten Island refused to indict the police officer who choked Eric Garner to death last summer.

As I write this, the testimony and other documentation is sealed, so we don’t know the various legal arguments that were presented to the grand jury.  What we do know is that a phone video clearly shows Garner standing still, even backing up a bit, with his hands in the air.  He is, admittedly, arguing with the police officers (that’s plural because we need five cops to arrest someone for selling “loosies”), but, if I recall what my mother taught me, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.”

What hurts is a cop coming up behind you, grabbing you around the neck, and choking you to death while he and his pals wrestle you to the ground.

Were there extenuating circumstances?  I don’t know.  Neither do you, based on the evidence we have available.  All we have is the video, which seems to me to show the key moments in the incident.  To some (but not all, including some of our more defensive elected officials that would be enough evidence to indict.

See, that’s the key.  Grand juries are supposed to decide whether or not there is enough evidence to indict someone.  They aren’t supposed to decide who is telling the truth and who isn’t.  That’s up to a trial jury.  The reason it’s up to a trial jury is that both sides — defense and prosecution — are entitled to question and cross-examine every witness.  In a grand jury, there is no cross-examination.

In just about every case, a grand jury, presented evidence (even conflicting evidence) will decide to indict.  It chooses not to in less than one-tenth of one percent of all cases.  By an amazing coincidence, they have decided twice in the last two weeks not to indict a police officer accused of killing an unarmed black man.

I’m ashamed.

I’m ashamed that I live in a city where I pay taxes that have continued to support this kind of barbaric racism for more than two decades.  I’m ashamed to be white when white people act like idiots.  I’m ashamed that people will defend police officers even when they are, at best, incompetent.  I’m ashamed this goes on and on and on.

Shame isn’t enough.  Shame makes it all about me,when it’s not (I know!).  There’s a lot of work to be done, and it’s going to be difficult and it’s going to make people angry.  We’re going to have to change the laws, change the system, and make our elected officials either get with the program or we’ll elect better people.

As a white person, I have to get over feeling picked on just because someone points out my privilege.  I have to listen to people whose experience is different from my own and believe them, no matter how difficult it might be.

And I need to learn how to use the video on my phone, because, apparently, that is more of a threat to the public order than choking an unarmed man to death.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, remembers back when she could try to write something funny about current events.