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Man
who filmed Eric Garner in chokehold says grand jury was rigged
Ramsey
Orta — who recorded the July 17 incident in which Officer Daniel
Pantaleo put Eric Garner in a chokehold shortly before he died on his
cellphone — told the Daily News the grand jury ‘wasn’t fair
from the start,’ and claims his testimony only lasted 10 minutes.
‘I think they already had their minds made up,’ he said.
4
December, 2014
The
Staten Island man who took the cellphone
video seen around the world of a cop killing Eric Garner with a
chokehold
said Thursday the grand jury was rigged.
“I
think they already had their minds made up,” Ramsey Orta told the
Daily News a day after the panel
voted not to charge Officer Daniel Pantaleo
with a crime.
“I
feel like it wasn't fair at all,” he said. “It wasn't fair from
the start.”
Orta
said he arrived at the Richmond County courthouse on Sept. 1 prepared
to be grilled for hours about what happened on July 17, when
cops confronted Garner on a Tompkinsville street
for selling unlicensed cigarettes.
Ten
minutes later, Orta said he was one.
“When
I went to the grand jury to speak on my behalf, nobody in the grand
jury was even paying attention to what I had to say,” Orta said.
“People were on their phones, people were talking. I feel like they
didn't give (Garner) a fair grand jury."
“People
was on their phones, people were having side conversations, like it
was just a regular day to them,” he said of the jurors.
Expert:
Daniel Pantaleo's remorse likely compelled grand jury not to indict
him
EDITORIAL:
Eric Garner decision has the earmarks of a gross miscarriage of
justice
Orta,
22, said his appearance before the panel started two hours late
because some of the jurors had not shown up.
Then
someone turned on the disturbing video of Pantaleo subduing Garner,
which was first obtained by The News, and which shocked New York and
the nation.
They
were asking me piece by piece — where I was, where I was standing
at, if I was the one who shot the video,” he said of the
prosecutors.
A
man he described as a prosecutor “wasn’t even asking no questions
about the police officer, he was asking all the questions towards
Eric,” Orta said. “What was Eric doing there? Why was Eric
there?”
“Nothing
pertaining to the cop choking him,” he said.
Only
a few jurors asked any questions.
“Maybe
three, that’s all,” he said. “The rest of them, they weren't
even worried about nothing.”
T
Those
that did pose questions were also more focused on Garner than
Pantaleo, he said.
“One
grand juror asked me, ‘If you knew he was selling cigarettes why
didn't you tell him the cops was there?’” he said.
Orta
said he told the female juror, “Well miss, we know the cops is
there every day, but the man has to make a living, some way,
somehow.”
“I
said, ‘First of all, you ain't gonna tell me how to talk,’” he
said. “These are my feelings and I feel like there should be no
sugar coating.”
ACQUIRED BY: TOMAS E. GASTONGarner died after the struggle with police. He allegedly yelled, ‘I can’t breathe’ during the incident.
Orta
said prosecutors “brushed it off.”
“They
actually cut my time short,” Orta said. “My lawyer told me I was
supposed to be in there for at least a half an hour and I only stayed
maybe 10 minutes.”
A
spokesman for Donovan’s office refused to comment on Orta’s
account.
Orta
said he feels the Garner family was cheated and is glad the Justice
Department will investigate the killing.
Orta
says his grand jury testimony only lasted 10 minutes. ‘I think they
already had their minds made up.’
“The
feds should pick it up,” he said. “Staten Island is too tied up.
They all know each other. They won’t violate their own kid.”
Asked
if was surprised by the decision, Orta said, “I knew this was going
to be the verdict.”
Orta
said the jurors saw the video that everybody else saw and still
wouldn’t charge Pantaleo with a crime.
“We
shouldn't have to fight for it, it's plain, it's right there,” he
said.
Otra’s
remarks were echoed by 37-year-old Rodney Lee, manager of the beauty
supply store in front of which Garner was killed.
“The
way the jury looked at me, I felt like they were suspicious of me,”
Lee said. “I told them what I saw and that was it. They didn't ask
me how I feel about it, what it looked like, what I thought.”
Lee
said he appeared before the panel on Oct. 22 and testified for “about
10 minutes.”
“I’m
pretty sure there were about 20 of us saying the same thing, that
this was not right,” he said. “They all treated us like we were
dumb, like we didn't know nothing ... I mean, what was the point of
us even being there if they weren't going to listen to us?”
The
only person indicted over Eric Garner's death was the guy who filmed
it
4
December, 2014
Remarkably,
the video of unarmed black man Eric Garner being choked to death by
Daniel Pantaleo didn't lead to the indictment of the police officer,
yet the man who filmed it is now in prison.
The
world was stunned today as a Staten Island grand jury decided
Pantaleo did not act improperly when he placed Garner, whom he
believed to be selling untaxed cigarettes, in a chokehold which
caused him to plead "I can't breathe" before dying shortly
after.
The
incident was caught on camera and quickly went viral.
The
man who filmed it, Ramsey Orta, was arrested in August a month after
the tragedy for allegedly concealing a handgun in a teenage
accomplace's waistband outside a New York hotel.
He
testified that police brought the charges in retaliation to his
dissemination of the Eric Garner video, but the grand jury ignored
him, indicting him on multiple firearm charges.
Garner
was the latest in a series of killings of unarmed black men by white
police officers in the US this year that have not seen prosecutions,
following on from Michael Brown whose death caused riots in Ferguson,
Missouri.
It
is incredibly rare for a grand jury not to return an indictment
(according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, of the 162,000
federal cases US attorneys prosecuted in 2010 grand juries only
declined to return an indictment in 11 of them), but the data tells
a very different story when
it is police officers in the dock
Lt
Mike Denton, fired for beating this man on video, gets his job back
Perhaps
the best way to deal with this is through satire
Police
Officer Demonstrates Proper Technique For Subduing Grand Jury
4
December, 2014
NEW
YORK—Saying that the maneuver was 100 percent effective if
administered correctly, police captain Matthew Carlson demonstrated
the proper technique for subduing a grand jury to a group of younger
officers Thursday.
“First and foremost, it’s important to get a
strong, firm hold on the state-level district attorney’s office
before you do anything else—that way, you’re making sure you
never put yourself in any direct danger,” said Carlson, who
explained a series of self-defense moves that would ensure grand
jurors interpret the law in such a way as to give police the widest
latitude in justifying the use of force, adding that performing the
moves correctly would cause jurors to submit to the officer’s will
“in no time at all.”
“When you’re out there facing a
prosecutor’s questions about whether you were acting lawfully and
with discretion, you won’t have time to think. And that’s why
it’s important that all of you master this technique now, because
inevitably, many of you will find yourselves in a situation where
you’ll need to call on this training. But used properly, these
methods will stop any prosecution in its tracks well before there’s
an indictment.”
Carlson went on to stress that subduing a grand
jury is a last-ditch option, and that officers should always try to
thwart any investigation well before there are official proceedings
DOJ:
Cleveland police have exhibited a pattern of excessive force
RT,
4
December, 2014
United
States Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday that the police
department of Cleveland, Ohio has engaged in a pattern of excessive
force during the last few years.
Speaking
from Cleveland, Holder said that a year-and-a-half-long investigation
launched by the US Department of Justice has uncovered evidence of
“systematic deficiencies,” “inadequate training” and
“ineffective policies” exhibited by local law enforcement between
2010 and 2013.
There
have been examples of “unreasonable and unnecessary use of force by
the Cleveland division of police” during that span, Holder said,
evidenced by 600 examples within just three years’ time, along with
what he described as “inadequate engagement with the community”
on behalf of the police.
The
attorney general’s remarks came roughly 24 hours after a grand jury
in New York declined to indict a police officer there in relation to
the chokehold death of Eric Garner earlier this year. Combined with
other instances of deadly force demonstrated by police in Ferguson,
Missouri and, even more recently, Cleveland, Holder said these
incidents have “raised urgent national questions.”
Last
month, a Cleveland police officer fatally shot a 12-year-old boy
holding a toy gun at an area playground.
On
the heels of that ordeal and others, Holder said that a “sense of
trust” must be renewed between law enforcement personnel “and the
communities that they serve and protect.”
“The
DOJ and the city of Cleveland have come together to set in motion a
process that will remedy these issues,” Holder said.
It's not only America where the police are totally out of control
Brutal
police beating of model shocks Australia
A video showing three Sydney police officers brutally beating a young woman has gone viral, with over 750,000 views on Facebook. During the clip, the victim is repeatedly hit with a police baton and appears to be kicked in the head by a male office.
RT,
4
December, 2014
Police
brutality has been hitting the headlines
in the US,
but now it seems the unfortunate trend has made its way to Australia.
The woman in question, Claire Helen, who works as a model and actress
and was on the receiving end of recurring blows from a police
officer, said: “It
was the most frightening and humiliating experience of my life.”
Law
enforcement officers allege that Helen punched a policewoman in the
mouth, as well as resisting arrest – an action that the model
stringently denies. "They
pushed me down. They hit me and kicked me. They pulled my dress over
my head," she
said, speaking to Channel Nine. Onlookers could be heard
shouting,
"Let
her go," and, "She's
not resisting arrest.”
Helen,
who is 1 meter, 60 centimeters tall and weighs 55 kilograms, insists
she was just enjoying a quiet night out when she was accosted by law
enforcement officers, who were much bigger than her.
"We
weren't drunk. We'd been with people playing soccer and went out to
have a few drinks. I'm not the sort of person who goes out getting
pissed on a Wednesday night. I'm trying to make it as a model and
actress. I can't go out every night getting wasted. I definitely
don't ever get in circumstances like this,"she
told Channel Nine news.
The
incident happened in the Kings Cross area of Sydney, which is home to
a number of bars and nightclubs, after Helen and a group of friends
haggled over a taxi fare, according to police. The law enforcement
agency also added that a male member of the group punched the taxi
driver in the stomach.
However,
Helen alleges that the taxi driver had charged the group the wrong
amount, which led to the trouble starting.
"He
had the meter running before we got in, so we got out," she
said. "He
said something to us and we said something back, but then he pushed
one of my friends and called the police. Then the police showed up
and you saw what happened," she
added, Channel Nine reported.
The
video has taken the internet by storm and has already been viewed by
over three quarters of a million people on Facebook. Many users
criticized Helen and defended the police.
One woman wrote:“She
deserved it. You’re supposed to respect your elders and respect the
law,” with
another adding,“She’s
not resisting arrest?? Really... I thought that if you weren't
resisting they would’ve had the cuffs on you 1 sec into the video…
she got what she deserved.... hopefully that taught her a lesson.”
Kings
Cross Superintendent Michael Fitzgerald said he was satisfied police
had used appropriate force, adding: "Police
are not punching bags, neither are taxi drives."
Darlinghurst Rd, Kings Cross, Sydney
(Photo from wikipedia.org)
He
added that police have reviewed CCTV footage of the incident, and
they say it justified why they took such a heavy-handed approach.
"I
have viewed the footage that has been uploaded on social
media," Fitzgerald
said. "But
I've also had the opportunity to view the entire CCTV from the City
of Sydney cameras which shows the entire incident. [It] clearly shows
the female offender punch the female police officer in an unprovoked
assault which caused the wrestle that you see on YouTube," Fitzgerald
added, ABC News reported.
The
officer who repeatedly struck Helen with a police baton will not face
any charges, police said. Helen and three men have been arrested with
a range of offences, including assaulting a police officer, assault,
affray and resisting arrest.
They have been granted bail until a
court hearing on January 6.
Commentary from RT
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