Resisting is a Crime

I want to quote from the Friday lead editorial in the Washington Post:

"[The Grand Jury declined] to lodge any charges against the police officer responsible for the brutal, quite possibly racially tinged and most certainly unnecessary death of a 43-year-old father of six. The victim’s supposed crime was selling untaxed cigarettes."  The underlines are mine.

What part of "no", dear Post, do you not get?  The specific crime for which he was wrestled down and held was not at all the selling of untaxed cigarettes.  That's the crime he was being arrested for.  The crime he was certainly guilty of, as anyone can see from the video, and was wrestled to the ground, leading to his death, is resisting arrest.  And it's about $%^$% time the Washington Post and the rest of the leftist media figured that out.

Eric Garner, the single-cigarette salesman who died after being wrestled down in a form of chokehold, would quite likely be alive today with his six kids, had he not committed the violation of New York Penal Law 205.30, i.e., Resisting Arrest.  When the cops -- led by a black female sergeant there on the scene, by the way -- were pushed away by Garner, he stepped into a different violation that had nothing to do with cigarette sales.  [Aside -- the Post failed to mention the black female sergeant's presence, no doubt to allow them to use phrases like "quite possibly racially tinged" without having to defend their having made that up.]

This bothers me on a number of levels, the first being that despite the declining sales of their newspaper, there are actually people who do read the Post, some who read the editorials and maybe a handful who actually take them seriously.

That, and a modicum of journalistic integrity, should drive the Post in a perfect world to ensure that, especially in its lead editorial, the facts that it uses to ground its opinions are, at their core, facts.  The editorial writer knows quite well that he told a big old four-Pinocchio whopper, and I'm darn sure going to call him on it.  Garner was not taken down because he sold cigarettes illegally, period.

From what the Post editorialist wrote, had you been completely unaware of the case and depended on the editorial for the fact, you would have inferred that Garner was caught selling cigarettes illegally and was killed because of it.  In fact, had he been caught selling cigarettes illegally (he was), and arrested for it (he was), and put his hands behind his back without physical resistance (that part he didn't), he would be alive today.

Horrible journalism, WaPo.  We used to expect better of you.

Copyright 2014 by Robert Sutton