Eric Garner, 43 years old, was being questioned by police while standing outside of a small beauty supply store. According to a witness he had just broken up a fight a little while before. Familiar with the police for illegally selling untaxed cigarettes, Garner insisted he was just minding his own business and they had no reason to have approached him. And according to the recording of this encounter, they really had no reason to arrest him at that moment either.
After several minutes of back and forth banter between Garner and the two police officers, one of the officers approached Garner, put him in a choke hold, and the other helped wrestle him to the ground. They held him in a choke hold on the ground for some time and other officers approached. Garner kept telling them that he couldn’t breathe and they ignored his cries for help.
Garner having asthma, was sent into cardiac arrest by this incident and soon after died.
The NYPD is facing some major heat for this unfortunate situation; as they absolutely should. Using a chokehold to restrain someone was outlawed years ago by the police department, for fear that they would bring about unnecessary injuries or deaths. For no reason whatsoever should an officer have to use one on someone; especially someone like Garner who was clearly not resisting arrest by any means in the video.
Not long before this tragic encounter the NYPD, in an attempt to create more of a positive image for the police department and in an effort to strengthen their relationship with the community, set up the hashtag “#myNYPD” on Twitter. The police department asked followers tweet any photos they have of themselves or family members with officers. They ended up getting more than they bargained for.
Instead of an influx of heart-warming images, the twitter nation started tweeting photos of police brutality. And not just in the New York area; people were tweeting about the LAPD as well. While some of the images were quite disturbing, this is exactly the type of social media efforts that create social change.
The death of Eric Garner, coupled with the outrage of New York residents, and the NYPD’s recent twitter escapades could be the start of a beautiful era of change. We live in a world today where people think racism has died off. But instances like this prove otherwise.
The NYPD says they welcome both the positive and negative pictures that people have been tweeting, but with the majority of them being brutally negative, I’m not sure how they plan to handle the negative attention these images will inevitably draw.
While I would normally feel awful for any “business” whose social media plan went so terribly wrong, I’m on the public’s side in this one; where for us I think it went magnificently right. It just goes to show that there’s strength in numbers, especially when those numbers have the potential to grow continuously via social media.
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