Thinking About Eric Garner

Thinking About Eric Garner

While playing with my infant son this morning, with Savannah Guthrie interviewing the widow of Eric Garner in the background, she intimated the law enforcement sentiment that “when you resist arrest, bad things happen.”

The video footage of Eric Garner being arrested is out there. 

Now it is known that the Officer used a choke hold on Eric Garner to subdue him.

Here is one thing that bothers me to an existential degree about this. When you choke a person you initiate the fight or flight response. 

As an exercise, have someone (you trust) get behind you and, and in the same fashion as the Officer in the video, cut off your air flow for, let us say 5-8 seconds. 

Notice what happens. Your fight or flight response will kick in NO MATTER WHAT. Your instinct to survive and breathe will overcome any other behaviors.

The question is: how can one not resist arrest when the arresting action initiates the fight or flight survival instinct?

This creates a tragic Catch 22. 

Isn’t there a better way to subdue a suspect?

Please don’t take this as minimizing the all-around humanity failure of this incident. 

No one should be dead for allegedly selling illegal cigarettes. 

No one should think that law enforcement arrest/subdue techniques or full body cameras are an answer to prejudice, racism, and bias, they are not. 

No one should think that there aren’t different rules for different people, there are. 

Everyone should think that bad things happen when you choke someone.