Some personal background on Eric Garner, that I've
only seen discussed in broadcast media by Fox News:
Seven years before his death, Eric Garner hand-wrote a civil rights lawsuit against the NYPDSTATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Seven years before his death, Eric Garner hand-wrote a federal lawsuit against the NYPD protesting his treatment during another run-in with police on Staten Island.
Garner wrote out the lawsuit while in custody on Rikers Island in September 2007, but the suit ultimately went nowhere. He failed to provide the court with an address to reach him at after he was released from jail, and by November 2008, a Brooklyn federal court judge dismissed the lawsuit entirely.
Still, the case remains a matter of the public record.
The Advance is not including the name of the one officer mentioned in the lawsuit, as the case against him has been dismissed.
On Sept. 12, 2007, while being held in the Otis Barnum Correctional Center on Rikers, he wrote on a court form document: "On September. 1, 2007, at approx.. 7:30 p.m. on the corner of Castleton Ave & Heberton Ave [a police officer] and his team stopped me for reasons of there own. I was ordered to place my hands on the black SUV in which they were riding in.
"I complied with no problem. [The officer] then patted me down by ways of going through my pockets and socks and not finding anything illegal on my person. [The officer] then places me in handcuffs and then performs an cavity search on me by ways of 'digging his finggers in my rectum in the middle of the street.' "
Garner claimed the officer unzipped his shorts, and pulled out and inspected his genitals "in the middle of the street, all the while there are people passing back and forth. I told [the officer] to stop and if he wanted to do a strip search on me I'm willing to go to the police station if he wanted to because I had nothing to hide, my request was ignored.
"I then told [the officer] that I was fileing charges for him violating my civil rights, I was then hit with drug charges and told by [the officer] 'that I don't deserve my city job due to the fact that I'm an convicted felon on parole.' (I work for the New York City Park Department."
Under the "injuries" category, Garner claims "the injuries I received was to my manhood in which (the officer) violated" through the search of his rectum and genitals "for his own personal pleasure. (The officer) violated my civil rights."
It wouldn't be Garner's last run-in with the law -- prior to the his death Thursday, he faced charges in three pending criminal cases.
Garner, 43, died Thursday, after police attempted to arrest him on suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes. A cell phone video taken as the scene unfolded shows an officer putting Garner in an apparent chokehold and dragging him to the pavement with the help of other officers.
Prior to the chokehold, an incredulous Garner tells officers he had just broken up a fight, then says, "I didn't sell anything. I did nothing... Every time you see me you arrest me. I'm tired of it. It stops today."
When two plainclothes officers move in on him, he lifts his hands, open-palmed, and says, "Don't touch me. Don't touch me, please don't touch me," and that's when one of the officers, since identified as Daniel Pantaleo, puts him in an apparent chokehold. Within seconds, Pantaleo and the other officers pull Garner down to the ground, holding him there as he repeatedly says, "I can't breathe."
He was pronounced dead at Richmond University Medical Center, West Brighton.
Several other letters to the editor refer to Garner having 31 prior arrests (and/or convictions). That part of the story is not being adequately covered either. I'd like to know what he has previously been arrested for.
