by John Hayward 5 Dec 2014

I read over two dozen major media reports detailing the circumstances of Eric Garner’s death yesterday, after the grand jury declined to issue an indictment against Officer Daniel Pantaleo, and angry demonstrators flooded the streets of New York.  Every single one of those reports, like all previous reporting on the case, went out of its way to mention that Garner was black and Pantaleo is white.

Some of those reports mentioned that several other officers were present on the scene.  A few of those reports noted, in passing, that a superior officer was watching over Garner’s arrest.  A very few of those reports said that the superior officer was a woman.  Absolutely none of them – not one – mentioned that she was black.  But such is the case, according to a blog post at Gateway Pundit:

Lost in the racial outcry over the decision to not indict white police officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Black petty criminal Eric Garner is the key fact that the attempt to arrest Garner was overseen by a Black female police sergeant.

The Black female police sergeant is not shown in the countless replays in the media of cellphone footage that showed white male police officers confronting and taking down Garner but she is said to be seen in the video.

That’s a highly relevant detail, given that the protesters believe Garner’s death was an act of racial discrimination, and Attorney General Eric Holder is grandstanding by claiming that the Justice Department will conduct a civil-rights investigation of Pantaleo.  That was always just a bit of political red meat thrown to the mob – the odds of DOJ actually bringing charges in such a case is nearly zero, given the burden of proof involved; their function is not to conduct a do-over on the lesser charges many observers think the grand jury should have brought.  But it’s especially ridiculous if the arrest was under the control of a black female officer.

There were actually two sergeants on the scene, and both of them gave testimony to the grand jury, which probably has a lot to do with why even the more minor charges of negligence were not handed down, along with medical testimony that Garner’s bad physical condition had more to do with his death than any “choke hold.”  (Even that assumption is not as cut-and-dry as protesters and the media tend to believe, because among other things, you can’t talk when you’re in a choke hold, and Garner was talking.)  

The media is so invested in politically correct, juicy Narratives – and so easily led around by representatives from the pressure groups they like – that they don’t dig in to uncover the details that might reduce paranoia and keep outrage from reaching the boiling point.  The Elizabeth Lauten nonsense shows how much digging they can do when they love a story, even as their audience groans, rolls its eyes, and wonders why intense background checks are being performed on obscure political staffers whose crime was writing a Facebook post.

By WhatDidYouSay.org