1. Asthma and obesity is irrelevant. A banned move known to have lethal effects is to blame when someone is killed, not the victim's health. Garner was neither having an asthma attack nor heart attack UNTIL AFTER he was choked and smothered to unconsciousness and left to die.

2. Contributing =/= Causal. Choke+smother caused it. Poor health just made death more likely but did not cause it. You need to wrap your brain around this, buddy. An arsonist can't blame the victims of his fire for building a wooden house.

3. I would actually indict every single incompetent cop who took part in the assault and just stood there and let the man die.

4. You need to seriously stop clinging to the victim blaming man. 

5. No, you're placing the blame on Garner's health. Which is in essence, blaming Garner himself (for who else but Garner had control over his health?). Think about it, the police had every bit if control over how whether to escalate or diffuse the situation, they had every bit of control over how much force they could use. They had every bit of control in dialing back the force they were using when it appeared that Garner was in distress. They had every bit of control to render aid when he went unconcious (police are trained basic CPR AFAIK). One would usually blame those who had the most control of the situation when it's time to assign accountability.

How stupid does a person have to be to not know that obese people would have heart problems? Especially in a country where a good chunk of people are obese? I mean how many "healthy people" are there really? My example stands. Nice try, tho.

6. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2711232/Players-punch-killed-soccer-referee.html

I think KLAMarine's stance is: Hey you guys better be healthy 'cause if not cops might accidentally kill ya and it's your fault.

Good advice, thank goodness we all can afford good medical care, healthy food, and a healthy habitat to live in so we all have an equal opportunity to be healthy individuals.

You're mistaking blame and explanation. I'm explaining why Garner lost his life.

No but the vulnerability of a wooden house can be used to EXPLAIN, not assign blame, EXPLAIN why a house fire took place. Using this fact, it's perfectly valid to say the arsonist set the wooden house on fire.

And I would not protest this move.

I never blamed the victim. You should understand the difference between an explanation and an assignment of blame.

I don't think police officers are trained to be well acquainted with the health problems of obese people; they're not doctors. They're probably busier being trained how to file paperwork, how to use their equipment, and how to go about arresting people.

Context: in this case, it was heat-of-the-moment aggravation due to sports rage thus this was second-degree murder, not manslaughter.

No, you would think wrong: my stance is Garner's death was an accident.

Serious question for everyone. With what has been going on lately in the news and all that has come to light with police brutality, police becoming more militarized, and police seemingly getting away with murder against minorities and children. Has it all at all had any affect on your opinion of Christopher Dorner? Personally before I thought he was crazy, delusional, suffering from PTSD and just went off his rocker. However lately I'm starting to think he was crazy less and less and that he witnessed a very real and serious problem from the inside and chose the only real option he had available to him. A problem we are likely seeing the affects now.

1. We don't need you to explain how he died, the coroner did that already. You just need to stop trying to rewrite the narrative by trying to deflect blame to Garner's health instead of the police's overly brutal reaction.

2. And the house's vulnerability to burning would have absolutely no relevance on the assignment of fault on the deaths of whoever was in the house. Just as Garner's health has absolutely no relevance on the assignment of fault when someone used a known potentially lethal move on him.

3. Good, then we can agree on this, at least.

4. See 1

5. It takes a special kind of stupid to not know obese people would have heart problems. Unless you're implying that the NY police force are all absolute morons, I'd have to just disregard this comment of yours....

6. Sports rage had nothing to do with it the judge's exact reasoning on why it was made murder 2 instead of manslaughter was that it was due to him knowing that the punch could have lethal consequences and he proceeded to do it anyway (http://archive.freep.com/article/20140731/NEWS02/307310121/Man-accused-of-killing-soccer-ref-returns-to-court-this-afternoon). Just like the choke hold being a KNOWN BANNED move by the NYPD because it was known to have lethal consequences and he decided to use it anyway.

7. And I'm not saying the he intended to kill Garner but that his poor handling of the situation combined with him gambling with someone's life using a banned move just to make his job easier caused someone to lose his life. And in this, Pantaleo is absolutely responsible for the man's death. Intentional or not.

I am not deflecting blame: I am correcting the omission you are making. You are quoting a PORTION of what the coroner has to say. You OMIT the following:

"Garner's acute and chronic bronchial asthma, obesity and hypertensive cardiovascular disease were contributing factors, the medical examiner determined."

You do this in one of your previous posts, the very post in which you provided the link containing the coroner's opinion:

Why such an omission? Have you not the confidence to quote the ENTIRETY of what the coroner had to say about Garner's death? It would seem to me that you are the one rewriting the narrative of what occurred July 17, 2014. You are rewriting what the coroner had to say.

Here's what it looks like when I assign fault: "The fault ultimately falls on...", "So-and-so is responsible for...", "Mr. John Doe is guilty of..."

I do not believe I have assigned any fault on anyone for Eric Garner's death. Or rather, I have not blamed either Pantaleo nor Garner.

Police aren't doctors. Perhaps they are indeed morons but on second thought, assuming medical conditions based solely on the appearance of obesity would be similarly foolish. I'd much rather the task of medical assessments be left to experienced doctors, police are best left in charge of taking in suspects.

So manslaughter?

1. Try not to rewrite the narrative of the debate pls. My initial response to you was due to this question that you asked:

Which is essentially asking what the primary cause was. So please let's not play the "you omitted" BS game here. That's just bad debating form.

And yes, you WERE attempting to deflect blame from the cop to Garner's health. As this statement proves:

You were insinuating that garner was already suffering from the very condition that killed him and the choke hold only made it worse, like he was having a heart/asthma attack BEFORE they decided to choke him out then smother him.

2. Because contributory =/= causal. You asked what was "more responsible" for his death aka. the primary cause, I emphasized the portion of the report where the medical examiner pointed it out.

3. Orrr you can say "X only made Y worse, but Y is what ultimately lead to Z". Which would make Y the culprit and X the unwitting accomplice don't you think? Sound familiar?

Pantaleo cannot escape blame without transfering blame to Garner. It's not as if he accidentally choked him out, smothered him and left him to die. You either blame the cop's methods or the victim's actions/conditions.

4. Which would mean we'd have to go back to my old man example. You'd be blaming the 80 year old man for being old if the cops wrestled him down and broke his neck, right? "The police merely aggravated his oldness!". Yeahhhhhhhhhh......

Apparently you think absolute stupidity is fine for public servants who carry guns and make life and death decisions....

5. Manslaughter at best, murder 2 at worst. Tho I will agree that manslaughter would have been the easiest to prove and i would prolly be happy if he went away for that...

Yes, it's a question I asked before you decided to walk away and break off the discussion as the post below demonstrates.

After breaking off the discussion, you make a stand-alone post to which I pointed out you had omitted information, post below:

You omitted details, I just felt the need to point that out. I want ALL of what the coroner had to say to be heard, not just a portion.

***

Reading comprehension: it's important. I was obviously not insinuating he was having a heart attack before the attack. Make note of what I said:

"The choke hold aggravated Garner's medical conditions (ailments unknown to police) which ultimately lead to a heart attack as he was transported to the hospital."

ultimately lead to - the statement prior preceded statement after: choke hold happened before the heart attack. Consequently heart attack happened after the choke hold.

as he was - this means heart attack occurred during transportation to the hospital, not before and I think you would agree the choke hold occurred BEFORE Garner was transported to the hospital.

As for the issue of Garner having asthma, one always has asthma as people with asthma will always say that 'they have asthma'. I believe the asthma attack occurred during the confrontation (as they at-times occur, during strenuous activity) as Garner was being wrestled and held down to the ground. I don't have proof of this however, not sure it can be forensically proven when exactly an asthma attack occurs.

***

Funny you point out that contributory =/= causal more than once

yet you yourself have used a form of the very word you object to:

Here you said the choke hold contributed to Garner's death. In other posts, you claim the choke hold caused Garner's death.

Get your stories straight.

Perhaps contributory = causal or contributory ≈ causal? Hmm.

***

Let me declare it now, now that I have read up a bit more on what had happened and have seen a bit more of the captured footage: I ultimately place blame (***HERE IT IS!!! THIS IS ME PLACING BLAME!!! THIS IS NOT AN EXPLANATION!!!***) on the police for the apparent incompetence they displayed after Garner had lost consciousness. They should have gotten Garner medical attention as soon as they realized his calls that he could not breathe were more serious than previously thought.

Keep in mind I don't know what sort of law could be used to charge the police at the scene, I don't know what protocol the NYPD is supposed to follow when someone they've handcuffed loses consciousness in the manner Garner lost consciousness, or who was ultimately in charge among the officers there. I am not a law student.

Edit, my language was a bit harsh so I decided to edit and tone it down a bit. Also, I missed half your post and I'm just now replying to it.

1. My reply was in direct response to your "the choking never happened" comment. I pointed out the excerpt from coroner's report where you may have been proven wrong. It seems to say that the primary contributor was the chokehold in causing the death. Meaning a choking DID happen. Only the specific information that directly adresses the issue at hand is needed when addressing said issue.

It is NOT my responsibility to type in the whole coroner's report, especially when I provided a link to it. Best not accuse people of omission, man. That like Implying that they're lying. FYI, you never asked for the coroner's report from me at that point, so your whole allegation is kinda BS, man.

2. I'm well aware what you meant by your statement. I just don't think you're aware about the implications of what you said, or maybe you do, I don't know. To aggravate implies that something existing was simply made worse. It was the heart attack that killed him later on (not the fact that he was fat), saying that the cop only "aggravated" his condition (taken to its literal point) is like saying the heart attack was present beforehand. The wording is very important here as it is required to determine where you are implying blame. The attack CAUSED his condition (made worse by his poor health to begin with) to deteriorate to the point of death would have been a better way of putting it, and we'd have no argument there.

Funny you should use the whole "reading comprehension" spiel only to misinterpret what I meant when I said "LIKE (<- very important!) he was having..." segment of my reply. Of course, I wasn't saying that you directly said he was suffering from a heart attack beforehand (especially when you mentioned that he suffered it later). That's the point. I used sarcasm to point out how your very statement was self-contradictory.

3. Yes, because a cause is always contributory but something that is simply contributory can't always be the cause. In many investigations, they categorize everything as "possibly contributory" until they can isolate the exact cause. Get it now? If you can fault anything is that I was very cautious in my use of language (not directly attributing the choke hold as the cause until I had more information).

So what's your point?

4. Yes, because I had to emphasize "(most likely) cause" later on as people (just you tbh) are trying to blur the line between the relevance of the chokehold vs the relevance of Garner's health in what caused his death. I needed to be more specific with my language in order to separate most probably cause vs factors that may have simply contributed.

What's the point to all this?

5. It is causal > contributory (and yes, the use of > is the same as =/= only more specific). Maybe once you wrap your mind around that (or do you need me to explain further?), you can stop trying to take this debate into a semantical tangent and debate the facts instead.

6. Good. NOW wer're getting somewhere.

Yes, we can agree about the blame being due to incompetence. But at the same time, don't forget thst it was also due to the overly aggressive nature of police reactions. Their inability and unwillingness to use de-escalation tecnhiques (in this specific scenario) and the fact that one douchebag (Pantaleo) used a banned move for almost no reason.

/rant

Police need to be accountable for their actions. I know it's a tough job that puts their lives at risk on a daily basis. But I would rather they increase hazard pay, get fewer, better trained cops that have a better mindset about their dealings with people and share a higher level of accountability than have a bunch of trigger-happy (or in this case, chokehold-happy) power tripping douchebags who think they're above the very laws and lives they swore to protect.

/rant off

And what color might your skin be?

To clarify, making this comment is like saying "there's no problem with racism. I can go and talk to all the white women i want and i don't get lynched! Folks don't get lynched for no reason."