eric garner

It's kind of hard for any rational person to view the grand jury decision on whether to pursue a homicide case against Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner as anything other than insane. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. There was a videotape of the whole incident. Almost everyone who viewed that video tape saw it as your usual police over reaction to some guy apparently (although no cigarettes were found on him) selling black market cigarettes on the corner. And the chokehold maneuver has been banned by the NYPD for years. There was nothing professional or ambiguous about the entire incident.

Was there any question this police officer should have at the very minimum gone to a trial by his peers?

And yet the grand jury came back with a decision to not pursue a trial. How is that even possible?

I'm guessing at this point that the entire construct of the grand jury is a facade. It's been said that a decent prosecutor could make a grand jury indict a ham sandwich if they wanted to. If that's true then it must be true that the prosecutor in this case simply didn't want the jury to come back with an indictment. Why would that be? I can only think of two reasons. First, political forces coerced or forced him to do this. Second, that there is a cozy relationship between prosecutors and the police force. Most of what the prosecutor does is bring indictments against people the police bring to the prosecutor. Does he need to avoid prosecutions of this type to avoid getting the cold shoulder from the police force?

Either way I think it's clear we won't see any police being indicted on any kind of charges in the near future. Body cams or not. And that can only lead to bad things.