David Greene sees eerie similarities between George Orwell’s 1936 essay “Shooting an Elephant” and the events of today. What were the police officers thinking when they took a fatal shot? What was the police officer thinking when he subdued Eric Garner with a lethal chokehold?
Greene’s post was prompted by a column written by Jim Dwyer in the New York Times. Dwyer had a printout of Orwell’s essay. He fell into a chance conversation about Eric Garner’s death with a man sitting next to him on the subway, who was familiar with the essay:
Mr. Harris’s recollection of the essay was sound: It was written by a former British police officer in lower Burma who was overseeing a town where a bull elephant broke free and wreaked havoc. The townspeople want the officer to do something about it. He shoots the elephant.
“Who was the writer?” Mr. Harris said, peering down. “George Orwell, of course. It’s a good analogy.”
Born in Harlem, Mr. Harris, 57, “an American of African descent,” said he had repeatedly watched the video of Mr. Garner, face pressed into the sidewalk, calling out that he could not breathe.
“Every time I look at it, see him on the ground, I —” Mr. Harris put a hand on his own chest — “I have a hard time breathing myself. I try to read his lips.”
No other officers intervened. The ambulance team that responded provided virtually no care to Mr. Garner as he appeared to be slipping out of consciousness.
“He’s a human being,” Mr. Harris said. “No one’s doing anything for him. It’s clear-cut. I don’t think the cop set out to murder him. But it’s not manslaughter? It’s not negligence?….”
Putting the entire discussion on the heads of police officers made little sense to him. Besides his job as a caretaker for a house, Mr. Harris said he works as a “freelance painter” and anything else he can pick up. “How are you going to feel as a man if you can’t pay the rent?” he said. “If Eric Garner had a real job, he wouldn’t have been on the street selling cigarettes. Poverty makes us angry. Racism and poverty together, it’s explosive.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here is a first hand account by David Corn from Mother Jones, of his experience as a witness to a police shooting in NYC.
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I Told a Grand Jury I Saw a Cop Shoot and Kill an Unarmed Man. It Didn’t Indict.
—By David Corn
| Thu Dec. 4, 2014 12:14 PM EST
Many years ago, during the 1980s, I witnessed a killing: a New York City cop shooting an unarmed homeless man near the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was later called as a grand jury witness in the case. The grand jury did not indict the officer.
It was a summer evening. I was heading to play softball in Central Park. At the corner of Fifth Avenue and 79th Street, I got off my bicycle to walk toward the Great Lawn. The west side of Fifth was crowded with New Yorkers enjoying the beautiful night. People were streaming in and out of the park. Sidewalk vendors were doing brisk business. The vibe was good. And in the midst of the hubbub, I spotted a fellow wearing dirty and tattered clothing. His hair was filthy, his face worn. It was hard to determine his age. He reminded me of Aqualung. (See this Jethro Tull album cover.) He was carrying a large and heavy rock with both of his hands, pushing his way through the throng, and muttering unintelligible words. I wondered, what’s his story? But I didn’t give it much more thought.
Most of the people on the corner were not paying attention to him. Those in his direct path, as he lumbered north, did quickly step out of his way. But no one seemed much alarmed by the guy. In New York City, unfortunately, you often saw broken people—and shrugged them off as just another crazy.
I was about to head down the footpath toward the baseball fields, when I saw a commotion to my right. Several police officers—four or so, I recall—were approaching the man with the rock. And their guns were drawn. As they neared the fellow, he dropped the rock, he then began to run in the same direction he had been walking. The cops were not grouped together; they were spread out—in a circle that was drawing tighter. The man, displaying a fair degree of agility, leaped into the street and tried to cut between two of the officers to get away.
Shots were fired. Two or three. Maybe four. And he went down.
The cops surrounded the man. He didn’t move. This was no longer a person. This was a body.
I moved closer to the scene. Passersby had stopped to watch. It was still difficult to assess his age. His clothes were a grimy gray. I saw his dirty hands. Both were empty.
Soon police cars and an ambulance arrived. The paramedics did not move fast. They covered the body with a sheet. Several police officers were standing around a female officer. She was in anguish. They were consoling her. It was obvious: She had fired the shots that killed the man.
Her race? She was white. His skin color? I thought it was dark, but it was tough to tell if it was dirt or pigment.
Cops were buzzing about the scene. Flashing lights illuminated this ritzy stretch of Fifth Avenue. On-lookers gawked. And I noticed something that struck me as odd: The police officers were not talking to any of the witnesses. They were talking to each other and the paramedics. I approached one cop and said that I had seen it all. He wasn’t impressed and looked at me as if to say, “So what?” I had thought the police would want to round up eyewitnesses to the shooting.
“Shouldn’t I talk to someone?” I asked this officer. He nodded his head toward another policeman. I went up to that cop. “Excuse me, officer,” I began. “I saw what happened.” Again, I received a look of disinterest. “Shouldn’t I….” He cut me off: “Talk to him.” He was looking at another officer who was barking instructions to other cops.
I tried once more. I approached this officer who seemed to be in charge. “Officer, I saw….” He shut me up with a wave of his hand, signaling I should wait. And wait I did, as he directed other cops to do this or do that. The paramedics were preparing to cart off the body. After a few minutes, I went up to this officer again and told him I had witnessed the whole episode.
“Okay,” he said.
He said nothing else. He didn’t ask me for my name. He didn’t ask if I would provide a statement. I was surprised by his lack of interest.
“Shouldn’t I tell someone what I saw,” I said.
“If you want to,” he said, not in an encouraging tone.
“Okay, who do I talk to?” I ask.
“If you want to make a statement,” he said, as if I was inconveniencing him and the entire police force, “you can go down to the station and do it there.” Now I got it: He didn’t want my statement, even though he had no idea what I would say. He was not interested in taking my name and contact information. It was my job apparently to make it to the police station on my own, and the station was a mile or so south.
This ticked me off. He was essentially trying to shoo me away. As the paramedics were loading the body on to the ambulance and as the cop who had shot the man was surrounded by her colleagues, I got on my bike and started to ride down Fifth.
At the station, I approached the front desk and told the officer staffing it that I had witnessed the shooting and had been told to come to the station to provide a statement. This fellow looked surprised to see me. He asked me to wait on a bench. I waited. Five minutes, fifteen minutes. I went back to the desk. Yes, yes, I was told, someone will be with you shortly. Another five minutes, another fifteen minutes. Obviously, no one would have minded if I gave up and left.
Sitting next to me in this waiting area was a woman—middle-aged and white (if that matters)—who was also a witness. We probably weren’t supposed to compare our accounts, but we did. (No one had told us not to.) She mentioned that she thought she had seen the victim holding something in his hand, perhaps a knife, when he started to run. Her vantage point had not been as good as mine, and I told her that I had seen the man drop the big rock and immediately begin to run. There had been no time for him to pull out a knife. Moreover, I had been in a position to see his hands—before and after he was killed—and I saw no knife. We looked at each other and didn’t know what else to say.
Finally, a detective—I think he was a detective, he didn’t say—came over and gave me a form on a clipboard and asked me to write a statement of what I had seen. I did. I stuck to the facts: nutty-looking homeless man carrying a small boulder, approached by cops, drops rock and runs, cops get closer, he darts between two of the officers, cop fires on him.
It was clear to me that the officer did not have to shoot the man. He was not threatening the officers. He was trying to run from them. But I didn’t write down this conclusion. I presented the facts; I believed their implication were undeniable.
When I finished, I handed my statement to one of the officers. I was told, “You’ll be contacted, if that’s necessary.” None of my interactions with the police led me to believe that a thorough investigation was in the works.
As I left the station, I saw the female officer who had fired the fatal shots. She was with several colleagues. She was upset and appeared to be crying. The other cops were being supportive. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. My interpretation was that she had screwed up; she had overreacted or panicked and fired her shots too soon. My hunch was that she knew that.
The next day—this was long before the internet era—I checked the newspapers and saw no stories on the shooting. Some time later—I think it was a couple of months—I received a call. A grand jury was examining the shooting, and my presence was requested.
I went to the courthouse at the appointed hour and waited to be called into the grand jury room. My time in the drab conference room with the grand jury was brief. The jury was, as they say, a diverse group. But most of the jurors looked bored. A few seemed drowsy. The prosecutor asked me to identify myself and certify I had filed the statement. He asked me to describe where I had been and whether I had seen the full episode. But he never asked me to provide a complete account. The key portion of the interview went something like this:
Prosecutor: You saw him start to run?
Me: I did.
Prosecutor: Did you see anything in his hand?
Me: No.
Prosecutor: Did you see him holding a knife?
Me: No. But I….
Prosecutor: Thank you.
I had wanted to say that I had seen him drop the heavy rock and bolt and that it was unlikely he had been able to grab and brandish a knife while sprinting. And I thought the grand jurors should know that he had not charged at any of the officers; he had been trying to dash through an opening between two of the cops in order to flee. And if they were interested in my opinion regarding the necessity of firing on him, I would have shared that, too.
But the prosecutor cut me off. He didn’t ask about about any of this. And not one of the jurors asked a question or said anything.
I left the room discouraged. This was not a search for the truth. It appeared to be a process designed to confirm an account that would protect the officer who had killed the man. The prosecutor was in command and establishing a narrative. (A knife!) The jurors appeared to be only scenery. (Insert your own ham sandwich reference here.) Long before the present debate spurred by the non-indictments in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases, it seemed clear to me that the system contained a natural bias in favor of police officers. That certainly makes sense. Police officers have damn tough and dangerous jobs, and they are going to look out for their comrades-in-blue who slip up. And prosecutors work closely with cops to rack up convictions, and they don’t want to alienate their law enforcement partners. No one in that grand jury room was there to serve the interests of the dead guy.
On the way out of the courthouse, I realized I did not know the name of the victim.
I subsequently called a reporter who worked on the metro desk of the New York Times to tell him about my experience, hoping the paper would dig into the case. But I never saw a Times story on it. (At the time, I was working for a magazine that covered arms-control issues and in no position to write about the event. And back then, there was no equivalent to tweeting, blogging, or Facebooking.)
Several weeks, or a month or two, after my grand jury appearance, I called the person who had contacted me about testifying. Whatever happened? I asked. Oh, the man said, the case is over. I took that to mean the officer was not charged. Before I hung up, another question occurred to me. I don’t know why I thought about this, but I asked, “Whatever happened to the body of the man who was shot?” He was never identified and buried somewhere, he replied. And I wondered, never identified? How hard did they try?
.
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Based on my participation on two grand juries, one this past August, your account of how witnesses are led is 100% accurate.
In each case the DA’s office presented only the evidence that they thought would produce an indictment. We were repetitively told all we needed was to think was that there was “only” reasonable cause to indict, not BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT needed to convict. In each case we we’re told that we were arms of the DA’s office, and in each case many of the members of each grand jury felt we had to fight for enough evidence to find the truth.
In Officer Pantaleo’s case, I thought the DA’s office did a good job in asking for indictments at three felony levels. I surely thought there would be reasonable cause to indict on at least one of them even if it was the lowest charge.
The question therefore arises, “Why didn’t 12 out of 23 grand jury members find enough evidence for REASONABLE CAUSE to indict. Were they consistently reminded that all THEY needed was to think there was”only” reasonable cause to indict, not the BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT needed to convict?
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Re: your most recent grand jury (or both, if you can recall): Do you remember whether the prosecution instructed the grand jury about what *elements* you had to find probable cause existed to support?
Just as an example, a prosecutor might say, “New York law defines second degree murder as the intentional causing of the death of another person. Therefore, to indict, you must find that there is probable cause to believe that (1) the defendant caused the death of the victim; and (2) the defendant acted with the intent to cause the death of the victim.”
And, if the prosecutor did instruct the grand jury about the elements of the offenses for which the state was seeking indictment, do you recall whether the prosecutor also gave an instruction about the affirmative defenses (e.g., self-defense) that the defendant had?
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As to your first point, while on the grand juries, there was always a reading the laws and instructions that go along with them as you correctly describe.
Regarding your second point, no. There was none. We were constantly told we were only to consider the evidence required to find reasonable cause for a true bill.
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“Putting the entire discussion on the heads of police officers made little sense to him. Besides his job as a caretaker for a house, Mr. Harris said he works as a “freelance painter” and anything else he can pick up. “How are you going to feel as a man if you can’t pay the rent?” he said. “If Eric Garner had a real job, he wouldn’t have been on the street selling cigarettes. Poverty makes us angry. Racism and poverty together, it’s explosive.”
“It’s the economy, stupid (sic)”
James Carville, 1991
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Jim. Please read Orwell’s essay. That is what the post is about, not Mr. Harris.
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If guns (and choke holds) don’t kill, as the right wing is so fond of saying, we can conclude the greed of oligarchs, their politicians and economists, pull the trigger.
Thanks for posting the observations and insight of Mr. Harris.
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Linda. Please read Orwell’s essay. That is what the post is about, not Mr. Harris.
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As someone whose husband is looking for employment after being downsized and shoved aside because he is 59 … and can’t find a job other than part time, and as someone who retired for health reasons and had to return to subbing for less in a week than I earned per day when I retired, I find the attitude that people who “don’t have a job” are “less of a person”. GUESS WHAT? We want to be gainfully employed, but for some of us, we just don’t know the right people, aren’t in the right industry, and quite possibly have spent our lives doing the “right things” … and we are in the same boat as these so-called “lazy” people who don’t have the money to pay for their insurance (or co-pay), let alone spend money on job training … How dare these condescending, self-righteous people look down on anyone with a generalized assumption?
This man may have done something that avoided some minor tax on cigarettes, but the same people who condemn him condone the corporate tax havens that prevent their honest contribution to making America a good place for everyone, not just for those who managed to find a way to keep their money secure from the vulturous IRS.
I don’t “love” taxes, but I realize that we are all in this together. Acting as if some people’s tax evasion is ok because Congress has been bought off to pass laws allowing it and to accept the general condemnation of the poor simply makes me sick.
I have relatives who have zero mercy for anyone who is PERCEIVED to be guilty … until it is THEY who get accused falsely. My niece was very hateful about the Ferguson situation, but she surely was mad when a cop pulled her over for his suspicion that she was using a cell phone while driving (He was wrong, her phone was at home, not in her car). But, she was ragingly furious … but somehow she defended the Ferguson cop. She tries to make all this ok by saying she does respect cops, but this one was a liar … And, guess what, there are pletny of people in ALL walks of life who are LIARS. And, there is a preponderance of misbehavior towards people of color, people who are poor, and people perceived as “non-workers”.
We need to get real. Tired. Of. This.
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Deb,
Thanks for writing this. I understand how difficult it is to get traction, in explaining the injustices, that we all have to fear.
I’m heartened by the protests across the nation. I’m joining the one on Wednesday, at Boehner’s office in Ohio.
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“The Ring of Power”
Wall Street barons got a raise
For making crooked bets
Eric Garner got a grave
For selling cigarettes
Justice is as justice does
Laws don’t mean a thing
Outcomes are as outcome was
For those who have the ring
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I was hoping that Orwell’s essay explained, without making right, police thought processes. Hope you got to read it.
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I just read Orwell’s essay for the first time since my early 20s. So good. One of the things that comes to mind after reading it is the dearth of first-person writing by police or former police about incidents like the deaths of Garner and Brown. I think we suffer for it.
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Yes. It is scary how other factors motivate the use of force.
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