Was it a choke hold or a submission hold? Was it his blood being cut off that triggered his heart issue? Does it matter? What is Garners part in this? Did Garner have a right to resist and object to the police presence? What he was doing was illegal and he kept doing it after several run-ins with the cops.
The encounter between Mr. Garner and plainclothes officers, from the 120th Precinct, began after the officers accused Mr. Garner of illegally selling cigarettes, an accusation he was familiar with. He had been arrested more than 30 times, often accused of selling loose cigarettes bought outside the state, a common hustle designed to avoid state and city tobacco taxes. In March and again in May, he was arrested on charges of illegally selling cigarettes on the sidewalk.
Community members gathered to pray in the Tompkinsville neighborhood where Mr. Garner died. Credit Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
For years, Mr. Garner chafed at the scrutiny by the police, which he considered harassment. In 2007, he filed a handwritten complaint in federal court accusing a police officer of conducting a cavity search of him on the street, “digging his fingers in my rectum in the middle of the street” while people passed by.
More recently, Mr. Garner told lawyers at Legal Aid that he intended to take all the cases against him to trial. “He was adamant he wouldn’t plead guilty to anything,” said Christopher Pisciotta, the lawyer in charge of the Staten Island office of Legal Aid.
Despite all the scrutiny from the police, most days Mr. Garner, a father of six, would stand on Bay Street, in the Tompkinsville neighborhood, his ankles visibly swollen, hawking loose Lucky cigarettes for 50 cents each.
On Thursday, when officers confronted him nearby and accused him of selling tobacco to a man in a red shirt, Mr. Garner reacted with exasperation, suggesting he was not going to cooperate. “I’m tired of it,” he said. “This stops today.”
“I didn’t do nothing,” Mr. Garner tells an officer. “Every time you see me, you want to harass me, you want to stop me.”
At one point he has his hands on his hips; at other points he is gesturing energetically. “Please just leave me alone,” he says. In the video, Mr. Garner can be seen crawling forward on the ground as an officer hangs on with his arm around Mr. Garner’s neck. Other officers surround Mr. Garner.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/nyregion/staten-island-man-dies-after-he-is-put-in-chokehold-during-arrest.html?_r=0