(AllHipHop News) It has been six years since Eric Garner’s life was taken from him by former police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, when he used an illegal chokehold on him.
Yup, it has been that long. It has been easy for that time to slip away, but with the current civil unrest ignited by the recent police-involved killing of George Floyd (also by a chokehold albeit his knee instead of a forearm), has brought it crashing back to the city (if not the nation’s remembrance).
“I can’t breathe.”
Both men Floyd and Garner said those words as their last utterances.
As a city, New York set a bad example to Minneapolis as to how to handle this. Now they can rectify it.
Monday, June 8, 2020, the New York State Assembly has now passed the Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act and its governor, Andrew Cuomo, has agreed to sign it into law.
“Ban chokeholds,” Cuomo said. “We went through that with Eric Garner. How many times? But [now we will] pass a law that says that.”
In fact, Cuomo has said that he will sign all of the 50-A bills that come to his desk.
Two of those bills on his desk waiting for his John Hancock will a) ban race-based and false 911 reports and b) one that will make police disciplinary records transparent to the public.
So it is moving … after years of it moving so slow to get it done … but why so long?
“New York should have passed this a long time ago,” Rev. Al Sharpton last week at a press conference last week. “Maybe the police would not have thought they could have gotten away
The New York Assembly members voted overwhelmingly in favor of A06144, a bill criminalizing aggravated strangulation for police officers, by a vote of 140 to three.
Brooklyn’s Walter Mosely, Assembly Member representing the 57th Assembly District sponsored the bill. He promises, “We’re going to make sure next time this happens in New York State, police officers will be going to jail.”
When speaking about the police, Mosley shares that “They are here to enforce the law, not to be above it.”
