Ten years on from the killing of Eric Garner, has anything changed?

A decade has passed since the killing of Eric Garner (Picture: Facebook/ Getty/ Rex)

On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner was approached by NYPD officers on suspicion of selling untaxed ‘loosie’ cigarettes in the New York City borough of Staten Island.

During his arrest, the 43-year-old African American man was put in a prohibited chokehold by officer Daniel Pantaleo that ultimately killed him.

Although police claimed that Garner suffered a heart attack on his way to hospital, resulting in his death, an autopsy revealed that Pantaleo’s chokehold set into motion ‘a lethal sequence of events’. The medical examiner ruled that Garner’s death was caused by the maneuver, which led to hemorrhaging in his neck and set off an asthma attack that in turn led him to go into cardiac arrest.

Video footage taken by passerby Ramsey Orta of his killing was widely shared online, with Garner audibly uttering the words ‘I can’t breathe’ eleven times before he fell unconscious. His lifeless body lay face down on the sidewalk as Pantaleo continued to apply force.

It took seven minutes for the ambulance to arrive. Garner was pronounced dead approximately one hour later at 4.34pm at Richmond University Medical Center. 

A screengrab shows Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, after a police officer put him in a chokehold (Picture: Ramsey Orta)

Garner’s mother and former train operator, Gwen Carr, became an activist, public speaker and author after the killing of her son. Reflecting on the moment she was told her son had been killed in an interview with ABC News, Carr shared: ‘I was hysterical.

‘My husband told me I was in no state to go to the hospital and took me home. I just wanted to go to sleep – wait until this terrible nightmare was over. But the nightmare was never over. It’s worse than a nightmare because at least with a nightmare, you wake up.’

In the wake of his death, many people across America mobilised, and Garner’s final words became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement.

But despite the public outcry, it took years for any real change to be enacted. A decade on from that fateful day, we look at what progress has been made.

Who was Eric Garner?

Eric Garner was a son, friend, husband and father of six (Credits: Kaitlinn Van Ert)

Garner was known as a peacemaker in his community. Born on September 15, 1970, he had worked as a mechanic, a bouncer and a horticulturist for the New York Department of Parks and Recreation. It was his asthma that meant he had to stop doing the latter.

He married his childhood sweetheart, Esaw Snipes, and together they had six children.

Six years after the killing of her husband, Esaw spoke to Revolt about how she wants Garner to be remembered. She said: ‘He was a good person and anything that he did, he did to make sure that his kids had – to make sure that they had everything that they needed and wanted.’

Tragically, Garner’s daughter Erica, who became an activist in the wake of her father’s death, died of a heart attack aged 27 in December 2017.

What happened to Daniel Pantaleo?

Police officer Daniel Pantaleo remained in his job for five years, until the New York Police Commissioner dismissed him in 2018 (Copyright: Eduardo Munoz / AP)

An out-of-court settlement was reached on July 13, 2015 and it was decided the City of New York would pay Garner’s family $5.9 million. 

It was only in 2019 – five years later – that Pantaleo was fired for using the prohibited chokehold. On July 21, 2018, a day before the five-year statute of limitations expired, the Justice Department announced that federal charges would not be filed against Pantaleo. 

Of the decision to dismiss the officer, James O’Neill, who was the New York Police Commissioner at the time, said: ‘I know that many will disagree with this decision, and that is their right. There are absolutely no victors here today – not the Garner family, not the community at-large, and certainly not the courageous men and women of this police department, who put their own lives on the line every single day in service to the people of this great city.

‘Today is a day of reckoning but can also be a day of reconciliation.

‘We must move forward together as one city, determined to secure safety for all – safety for all New Yorkers and safety for every police officer working daily to protect all of us.’

Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner (Picture: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The delayed response was widely criticised by both the public and Garner’s family, who had long petitioned for Pantaleo and other officers involved in the arrest to be punished.

‘We’re not finished. We have other officers that we have to go after,’ Carr said at a rally outside the NYPD headquarters in Manhattan. ‘You have heard the names. We know the wrongdoing that they have done. Show the pictures, say the names. Do the roll call, because they all need to lose their jobs.’

When asked about the condolences offered by Pantaleo, Esaw Garner replied: ‘The time for remorse would have been when my husband was yelling to breathe. That would have been time for him to show some type of remorse, or some type of care for another human being’s life’. 

How Black Lives Matter became an international movement

People march for justice for Eric Garner (Picture: Erik S. Lesser/EPA)

While experts, including Kent Bausman, a sociology professor at Maryville University, attribute Garner’s death as an ‘absolutely critical starting point’ in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, it actually dates back to 2013 – the year after the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida.

Activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Ayo Tometi originated the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media after the acquittal of George Zimmerman who killed Martin. That same year, Rekia Boyd, a 22-year-old African American woman and was fatally shot in Chicago, Illinois, which also sparked protests.

Following Garner’s death, there was a series of shocking killings throughout 2014 that then heightened the sense of unease and gained international attention; on August 9, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson and then 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by officers on November 22 in Cleveland, Ohio.

‘From August to November 2014, Ferguson and neighbouring St Louis were on edge,’ Bausman tells Metro.co.uk about the killing of Brown. 

A memorial appeared in the same street where Michael Brown was killed (Picture: Kent Bausman)

‘Protests and police presence was a 24/7 phenomenon at the time, documented in near totality on social media. It was that sustained protest which generated BLM into a recognisable movement. 

‘It was a tinderbox, compounded by Garner’s earlier death that summer. His dead body mortifyingly was left out on the hot summer asphalt street for over an hour while the community watched in horror.’

A grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, decided not to indict Wilson on November 25, with protests taking place across America. Garner’s death was also referenced in the protests and vigils.

Similarly, following the decision to not indict Pantaleo, protests and rallies took place across the country and also here in the UK, most notably at London’s Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush.

A local business in St Louis, Missouri prepares for unrest by protecting its window with wood (Picture: Kent Bausman)

The new era of surveillance by the general public

The filming of police brutality and casual acts of racism against Black people has also become a chilling theme since 2014 – with videos regularly exploding over the internet and sparking widespread outcry.

In May 2020, for example, when George Floyd was killed at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, Minnesota, footage of his death circulated far and wide.

Over the course of nine minutes and 29 seconds, Floyd could be heard repeatedly telling Chauvin, who was kneeling on his neck and back, ‘I can’t breathe,’ before he lost consciousness and died on the pavement.

George Floyd was killed in May 2020 (Picture: Enterprise News and Pictures)

On the same day, birdwatcher Christian Cooper was filmed by a white dog walker named Amy Cooper (unrelated) in New York’s Central Park, after he asked her to put her pet on a lead so as not to scare the wildlife. She was subsequently branded a ‘Karen’ for calling 911 on Cooper without provocation.

And while the existence of social media has naturally increased awareness and the visibility of such horrific scenes, we know that these cases go beyond what is captured in a short clip.

Nor was Garner’s death the first incident of its kind to be broadcasted to millions. In 1991, a person in a nearby apartment building filmed the assault of Rodney King carried out by LAPD using a camcorder. Footage of officers repeatedly beating King with their batons was then shown by international news outlets.

When three of the four officers were acquitted on charges of using excessive force, the 1992 Los Angeles riots started. King survived the assault (he died in 2012).

On March 3, 1991 Rodney King (on ground) was beaten by LAPD officers (Credits: AFP/Getty Images)

Nancy Marcus, an associate professor of law at California Western School of Law, says the documentation of police brutality was a key component in making people aware of the issue in 2014. Garner’s death ‘was one of a score of police killings in the United States in a year’s time span captured by civilian cell phone journalism,’ she says.

‘Recent police reform movements have undoubtedly been sparked by increased citizen surveillance. While excessive police violence against people of colour is nothing new, what is new is how frequently that violence is now being documented and broadly disseminated, often by those who happen to be in the right place at the right time, armed with smartphones and social media access.’

What changed culturally and legally after the killing of Eric Garner?

A rally and march at the clock in Grand Central Terminal to commemorate the five-year anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown (Picture: Erik McGregor/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock)

The NYPD had already banned the use of chokeholds in 1993, but in 2020, the New York State Assembly passed the Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act, criminalising the use of chokeholds that result in injury or death. It is punishable by 15 years in prison.

Just days before the bill was signed by then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said the law was ‘long overdue’, George Floyd was murdered.

According to Nancy Marcus, there have been ‘thousands’ of laws introduced at state level across the country since 2020, which aim to restructure the use of police force in various ways.

President Obama also spearheaded a number of national law enforcement reform initiatives, proposing and resulting in bans on specific types of violence, Marcus says.

However, many of these reform efforts were ‘largely halted’ under the Trump administration. In 2017, Trump famously told police officers ‘please, don’t be too nice’ when arresting people.

Marcus says the Biden administration, along with states across the US, has resumed reform efforts. 

But even with these updates, police brutality remains a prevalent issue in America.

A 2021 report found that Black people are still killed by police at a higher rate in the US compared to other races. Data shared with NBC News by Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit group that tracks police shootings, found that Black people are twice as likely as white people to be shot and killed by police officers.

More recently, the number of fatal police shootings involving Black people rose significantly from previous years, with a total of 1,161 deaths recorded in 2023 alone. So far this year, 637 deaths of this kind have been registered – and that doesn’t account for fatalities where guns were not involved.

And it was only in November last year when 10-181 of the Administrative Code of the City of New York, which makes criminal the use of certain restraints by police officers during an arrest, was upheld by the New York Court of Appeals after police unions argued the rules were vague.

As for Eric Garner’s family, the pain is still as fresh today as it was a decade ago. In April 2024, Carr told The Harvard Gazette: ‘That fateful day put me in a dark place.’

She decided to ‘turn my mourning into a movement and turn my sorrow into a strategy’, acknowledging her shift to advocacy work. She started an organisation, The E.R.I.C. Initiative Foundation, which supports and empowers youths and families who have been victims of police brutality.

‘I just want to keep his name alive,’ she said. ‘I want the world to know who my son was and that he wasn’t just a news story.’

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