I found the video on youtube and watched it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1ka4oKu1joNow, I think the crucial moment in this situation is how they placed him under arrest. I can't hear it in the video, but I think maybe at the 34 second mark is when the one cop may have said to Garner that he's under arrest.
But I don't know, you can't hear what the cop was saying.
It just looks like a really amateur job by these cops. They just start grabbing him, kind of randomly, and then Garner says "don't touch me." It's just kind of weird to me, I've never seen cops arrest in this manner.
So they obviously took the "don't touch me" as resisting arrest -- and that's when BOOM they do the sleeper hold and they all jump him.
Ok, now at the 55 second mark.. THAT is DEFINITELY when they should have let up.
I've seen a lot of episodes of Cops (which makes me an expert lol) but really here, I don't think that arrest was handled right.
That wasn't a big crime in progress or something, or anything major. What cops are supposed to do in a situation like that is clearly tell the person, in a stern but calm and clear way, that they're being placed under arrest.
***
You see this on the tv show cops, all the time, a good cop will actually be talking softly to the guy and calming him down even while he is cuffing him. And that *prevents* it from getting worse. And that's what was not done here.***
They have a point with this one, the arrest wasn't done right, and all the guy was doing anyway was just selling loose cigarettes.
That's actually a sad video. Ok, towards the end he stops resisting but starts resisting again -- and saying he can't breathe -- what's sad there is that he was dying at that point, you can't help but fight back if you're being choked to death and dying.
He died right there, they still had the choke hold on him, and he was dead.
This was excessive force and not done right, they didn't INTEND to kill him but they did. Not shown in that video I linked, but after it became clear something was wrong they started asking "are you okay, big guy?"
So what's going on here. Do police need better training?
I think a lot of these cops are so young. I saw a thing on CNN about how in NYC they take fresh cadets right out of school and put them in the tough neighborhoods (Bloomberg called it the "surge" strategy). These cadets are KIDS though, and don't even know what they are doing, and have to go back to the supervisor to ask about every little thing and how to handle basic stuff like cause for arrest.