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Eric Garner Killed Over Race …Or Nanny State? -Police Operating Under Orders to Improve ‘Quality of Life’ in Neighborhood
Eric Garner held by police
A common accusation of protesters over the “stranglehold” death of Eric Garner is that police targeted the single cigarette salesman because of his race.
Lost in much of the nation’s conversation about Garner’s death, however, is that just prior to his arrest on Bay Street in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of Staten Island, New York Police Department Chief Philip Banks singled out the precinct with an order to crack down on the illegal sale of 75-cent cigarettes.
According to the New York Daily News, which documented in August the order to address so-called “quality of life” issues, the crackdown on the illegal sale of single cigarettes directly led to the chain of events that ended with Garner’s arrest and death.
The Daily News quoted a source close to the Garner investigation detailing how Banks, who resigned in November, sent a sergeant from his own offices in July “to investigate complaints of untaxed cigarettes being sold in the Tompkinsville neighborhood.”
The newspaper reported Banks’ office focused on Bay Street specifically, even surveilling the area and taking pictures of men thought to have been involved in the illicit cigarette sales.
Five months earlier, in March, the untaxed single cigarettes issue was discussed at a meeting in Banks’ office, according to the Daily News.
One month later, on March 27, a source told the Daily News a caller to the city’s 311 hotline complained about the issue, identifying one of the cigarette sellers as “a man named Eric.” One day later, Garner was arrested for selling the untaxed cigarettes. He would be arrested three more times before the fatal run-in on July 17.
According to the Daily News source, in early July, a memo was sent to the Staten Island borough command stressing the need to address quality-of-life issues, purportedly including the untaxed cigarette sales.
Read more at WND:
http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/eric-garner-killed-over-race-or-nanny-state/
so he was MURDERED because the state wasn’t getting its cut of the sales!