UPDATE on GARDNER

I call your attention to this addendum I posted to yesterday’s blog.  Addendum: In an attempt to clarify my blog; (1)-I do not condone the police action in this case. Gardner was not being abusive or a threat to the police. (2) The "crime of selling loose cigarettes did not merit the gang of police to arrest him in handcuffs. (3) the so called "choke hold" was not the cause of his demise but it was not a warranted act, (4) His medical problems and stress of the incident probably caused a cardiac arrhythmia(Ventricular Fibrillation?) which is incompatible with life since oxygen does not reach the brain or other organs. This would give him the impression that he could not breathe. (5) The police and EMRs were guilty of not administering CPR during the 6 or 7 minutes he was anoxic and on the ground. This is a crime that they should be punished for. His life might have been saved  if CPR was instituted. (6) the EMRs did not use their defibrillator to restart normal cardiac rhythm,. #s 5&6 should be cause for Federal court action based on deprivation of his civil rights.

I would have written on the subject of the disproportional arrests and shootings of black males by police in contrast to the statistics about Hispanics and whites. However it is difficult to get accurate numbers other than there is no question that  racial profiling exists.

According to Mother Jones:”"We need not look for individual racists to say that we have a culture of policing that is really rubbing salt into longstanding racial wounds," NAACP president Cornell Williams Brooks told Mother Jones. It's a culture in which people suspected of minor crimes are met with "overwhelmingly major, often lethal, use of force," he says.

In Oakland, California, the NAACP reported that out of 45 officer-involved shootings in the city between 2004 and 2008, 37 of those shot were black. None were white. One-third of the shootings resulted in fatalities. Although weapons were not found in 40 percent of cases, the NAACP found, no officers were charged “

Of interest is this table:

 The problem is that it is a known fact that the statistics about death related police shootings are inaccurate due to incomplete reportings. It also has been reported that the ratio involving Blacks to Whites/Hispanics may be as high as 15:1.  That could be exaggerated but the fact is that a black male of any age or economic status stands s greater chance of being stopped NY the police than a white person.

I had more material somehow it vanished into cyberspace. That couple with a Dawg that wants to play when I am on the computer and a carpal tunnel problem makes typing difficult.