Peter King, Asshole of the Day for December 4, 2014
Whenever something awful happens where the victim is black and the perpetrator white, there are always apologists. So we can't act too surprised when people spring up to defend the policeman who used an illegal chokehold to kill Eric Garner over a petty crime.
"You had a 350-pound person who was resisting arrest. The police were trying to bring him down as quickly as possible," King said in an appearance on CNN's "The Situation Room." "If he had not had asthma and a heart condition and was so obese, almost definitely he would not have died from this. The police had no reason to know he was in serious condition."
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"I have no doubt, if that were a 350-pound white guy, he would have been treated the same," King told CNN.
While the death of Eric Garner was tragic, all New Yorkers should respect the decision of the Staten Island grand jury not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo.
During this tense time in New York, it must be noted and remembered that no organization has done more to safeguard the lives of young African Americans in New York City than the NYPD.
It is time for all New Yorkers - and indeed all Americans - to acknowledge this fact.
It must be noted and remembered that no organization has done more to safeguard the lives of young African Americans in New York City than the NYPD. From these protests it's pretty obvious that African Americans don't think this is true. And they would know, wouldn't they? And there are more. Off the top of her head, my friend @GirlGetALife suggested that "these guys would disagree with King's statement about no one doing more than the NYPD to protect black lives/black men":
Discriminating against and brutalizing a population is not defending it. And I'm just sick of people assuming that harassing and harming minorities is the only way to maintain law and order. I'm thinking of people like Ray Kelly and others who say things like this:
Former New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly predicted last year that “no question about it, violent crime will go up” if the city were to move away from stop-and-frisk policing. He was wrong. Stop-and-frisks, which almost exclusively targeted black and Hispanic men, are down 79 percent through the first nine months of 2014. And instead of descending into chaos and crime, New York has also seen less violent crime. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Tuesday the city's crime rate fell 4.4 percent in the first 11 months of the year.
So crime went down, and so did the harassment of innocent minorities. I just hope DeBlasio doesn’t stop there; the police still need fixing. But the point is that police don't need a blank check to enforce the law.
And people like King should just stop with their police defense at all costs, no matter what they do. It's crazy, and insults the intelligence of everyone. People have bad days at work. Police are people, and they have bad days too. Days when they are not at their best. Days when they make mistakes. Should they be fired for a bad day? I guess it depends on what happened, but they should be held accountable. Just like everyone else.
And we all know that some people don't just have bad days-- they're lazy, sloppy, reckless, abusive. They should be fired. We resent when those coworkers aren't fired. So, why, I ask, is it OK to hold everyone but cops to this standard? Especially when someone dies because of them?
Finally, it'd be nice of police were willing to criticize another policemen for horrific behavior now and then, especially when it's caught on tape. But they never do. Code of silence and shit. But then they and their district attorney friends complain about African Americans refusing to snitch? Please. Try leading by example.
So, for claiming that NYPD defends African American lives more than anyone, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Peter King is the Asshole of the Day.
It is Peter King's first time being named Asshole of the Day.
