Yesterday afternoon, Daniel Pantaleo, the NYPD officer responsible for the death of Eric Garner, was not indicted after a Staten Island grand jury reached a "no bill" vote, essentially letting Pantaleo off the hook in the eyes of the New York City judicial system.
Hours earlier, during an interview with CNN's Brooke Baldwin, former NBA All-Star and current TNT analyst Charles Barkley shared his thoughts on the Garner case, offering an opinion that many, including the coroner responsible for examining Garner's body, would find controversial:
“I don’t think that was a homicide. I think the cops were trying to arrest him and they got a little aggressive,” Barkley said. “I think excessive force — something like that — but to go straight to murder?
“Brooke, when the cops are trying to arrest you, if you fight back, things go wrong. I don’t think they were trying to kill Mr. Garner. He was a big man and they were trying to get him down.”
Barkley is clearly ignoring the fact that the methods the police used to "get [Garner] down" were completely illegal; chokeholds have been banned by New York City law enforcement since 1993.
However, Barkley didn't stop there. He continued to explain his feelings about America's police force, going so far as to call them "absolutely awesome":
“The notion that white cops are out there just killing black people is ridiculous. It’s just flat-out ridiculous,” he said.
“I challenge any black person to try to make that point. Cops are absolutely awesome. They’re the only thing in the ghetto from — between — this place being the wild, wild west. So this notion that cops are out there killing black men is ridiculous.”
