The real issue in both the Ferguson, Mo. case and the New York City case of real, or imagined Police brutality is not the guilt, or innocence, of either the arresting officers, or the suspects, but whether the suspects had a right to resist arrest at all. In my opinion, they did not have that right, which they reputedly chose to do, and in the New York City case, we all clearly saw on video that Garner was resisting, regardless of whether he should have been arrested, or not. He was almost twice the apparent size of the first two officers who tried to handcuff him, and he immediately began to struggle with them, which precipitated the gang-tackling of the other three officers who were then assisting in arresting him for the crime of resisting arrest, not for the misdemeanor of selling cigarettes on the street. If he had not resisted, he would likely be alive today, and at worst be forced to pay a ridiculous fine, which would probably be reversed upon appeal, laying the groundwork for the abolishing of the stupid law he was intentionally breaking. The point was that by resisting he was refusing to abide by the legal system that the police were bound to enforce, whether they approved of the laws or not. In that case he renounced his legal right of protection from the risk of excessive force used against him in the effort to arrest him. The officer should be rebuked for using poor judgment in applying the choke-hold too long, or too hard, but the legal responsibility for putting him in the position to make that judgment call rests with the resistor himself. You don't have the right to protect yourself from the risk of excessive force, because of a legal system that you are renouncing by resisting arrest.
The Civil Rights Movement got it's fame and it's past successes from the concept of non-violent resistance, which brought the central issue from the arrest to the legality of the laws that were being resisted. When the legal issue shifted to the righteousness of the laws on the books, the courts found them to be unconstitutional, and they were mostly overturned. But Mr. Garner was guilty of resisting arrest, against policemen whose safety was at least initially at risk, at which point the officers can be excused for deciding to use greater force, though it was poorly executed. The responsibility for this lies with him, for the issue now becomes one of resisting arrest, not of selling cigarettes illegally.
In the case of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo., we can only use the testimony of the witnesses, since there was no video for us to view of the incident. Since there were conflicting accounts of whether he was shot down in "cold blood", or whether the officer was legitimately defending himself from an assault by a young man who was trying to shoot him with his own gun, and was easily twice his size as well, the Grand Jury decided that there was not enough evidence to bring the officer up on charges. That is not the same thing as an acquittal. The officer may well be guilty, but the Grand Jury did not think the evidence was sufficient enough to decide either way. The law protects the guilty, as well as the innocent until the evidence of guilt is overwhelming. But the violent protesters in Ferguson were not interested in legal evidence, nor the rule of law that protects us all, in most cases. We can not have anarchy overruling law if we are to be protected from the oppression that these protesters claim were used against the principals in these cases.
The concept of "non-violent protest" is effective, as both Gandhi, and Martin Luther King have proved. But today's protesters are unwilling to use the legal system to improve itself, from within. They'd rather scrap the system, believing that people like Al Sharpton can create a better one than our Founding Fathers did. Martin Luther King must be "rolling over in his grave", along with our Founding Fathers.
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