On this day in New York · July 17, 2014
"I Can't Breathe" on Staten Island
A Staten Island father stopped for selling loose cigarettes died in a police chokehold, and his last words became the rallying cry of a movement.
The facts
- Date
- July 17, 2014
- Location
- 202 Bay Street, Staten Island
- Cause
- A banned NYPD chokehold during an arrest for untaxed cigarettes
- Aftermath
- A grand jury declined to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo in December 2014
On July 17, 2014, police on Staten Island approached Eric Garner, a 43-year-old father of six, on suspicion of selling untaxed loose cigarettes outside a Bay Street storefront. When officers moved to arrest him, Officer Daniel Pantaleo took him to the ground with an arm around his neck, a hold the NYPD had banned years earlier. Garner said the words "I can't breathe" eleven times before he lost consciousness, and he was pronounced dead about an hour later. A bystander's cellphone video of the encounter spread across the country. That December, a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
-
I can't breathe
Eric Garner, who said the words 11 times, Staten Island, July 17, 2014
Source: Killing of Eric Garner, Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Garner's death, months before Ferguson, helped set off the modern movement against police violence, and "I can't breathe" has been chanted at protests ever since. The NYPD fired Pantaleo in 2019, and in 2020 New York State made the chokehold a crime.
Sources
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