A work of riveting literary journalism that explores the roots and repercussions of the infamous killing of Eric Garner by the New York City police—from the bestselling author of The DivideNAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST On July 17, 2014, a forty-three-year-old black man named Eric Garner died on a Staten Island sidewalk after a police officer put him in what … sidewalk after a police officer put him in what has been described as an illegal chokehold during an arrest for selling bootleg cigarettes. The final moments of Garner’s life were captured on video and seen by millions. His agonized last words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry for the nascent Black Lives Matter protest movement. A grand jury ultimately declined to indict the officer who wrestled Garner to the pavement.
Matt Taibbi’s deeply reported retelling of these events liberates Eric Garner from the abstractions of newspaper accounts and lets us see the man in full—with all his flaws and contradictions intact. A husband and father with a complicated personal history, Garner was neither villain nor victim, but a fiercely proud individual determined to do the best he could for his family, bedeviled by bad luck, and ultimately subdued by forces beyond his control.
In America, no miscarriage of justice exists in isolation, of course, and in I Can’t Breathe Taibbi also examines the conditions that made this tragedy possible. Featuring vivid vignettes of life on the street and inside our Kafkaesque court system, Taibbi’s kaleidoscopic account illuminates issues around policing, mass incarceration, the underground economy, and racial disparity in law enforcement. No one emerges unsullied, from the conservative district attorney who half-heartedly prosecutes the case to the progressive mayor caught between the demands of outraged activists and the foot-dragging of recalcitrant police officials.
A masterly narrative of urban America and a scathing indictment of the perverse incentives built into our penal system, I Can’t Breathe drills down into the particulars of one case to confront us with the human cost of our broken approach to dispensing criminal justice.
“Brilliant . . . Taibbi is unsparing is his excoriation of the system, police, and courts. . . . This is a necessary and riveting work.”—Booklist (starred review)
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Thank you, Matt Taibbi, for telling the story of the murder of Eric Garner in a way that renders him and those around him real, understandable humans. This is my first foray into police-murder-non-fiction. Shocking. A great reminder of just how not-woke a white suburbanite can be.
Amazing history, details and Insights into stop and frisk policies behind many police departments policies around the country and how it impacted people in Black areas and In particular, Eric Garner’s life and death… unfortunately, we still see it’s impacts today. When will prejudice stop and when will this country realize poverty and having no options leads to criminal behavior….
A stellar example of in-depth reporting.
***MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS BUT PROBABLY NOT ANYTHING YOU WOULDN’T ALREADY KNOW***
I won this book on a Good Reads giveaway through Random House for my honest opinion.
However, I took my time reading (over a month) due to highlighting parts and bending corners of the book, watching the videos on YouTube etc. So I finished it last night and ready to write a review.
First, I like to comment the Author on a great, interesting, well written book. I tend to agree on a lot of his opinions which I will put into the rest of the body of this review. I’m not a political book reader at all, I get lost easily in politics, however this Author made it easy to understand. After reading this I looked up the Author’s other books and I’m thinking about trying, Smells Like Dead Elephants and The Divide.
Second, the review in my own opinion, unless stated otherwise.
after watching Cops for years and now Live PD you get a understanding of the law in different states. You get to know what kind of people give cops a hard time and which ones don’t, which ones run and which ones don’t (yes, black and white) being majorly black due to having a gun and/or drugs as shown on the above shows, not my opinion but being recorded on above shows. Also a big presents is the riots after a police officer is not arrested, enough to cancel schools, close businesses, stop traffic on highways, National Guard, destroy your own hometown, that’s just stupid over one cop at a time.
There are good cops and bad cops, in Chapter Fifteen, there is a reference to a video about Robert Lewis Dear who shot five cops and killed one but since he was white “there wasn’t a mark on his face,” well maybe those were probably good cops. The bad ones unfortunately kill and then that’s when they are exposed, in reality, they should of been fired from all the complaints against them in the first place. I mean that would of been easier than shoveling out millions of dollars to families that now have to live without a family member that they loved and may have been totally independent on. I feel bad and appalled for murdered officers Liu and Ramos, the Dallas cop shootings and the families of each black man that was shot by crooked cops, I don’t feel bad for the cops who shot each of these men and agree they should be in prison. Daniel Pantaleo had problems before the Garner incident as stated in the Epilogue.
Third, Eric Garner.
Yes, he repeatedly broke the law and resisted arrest according to the book. Mr. Garner’s family should not have been awarded money because he broke the law and resisted arrest as per the Mayor’s Office. Mr. Garner’s family was awarded a settlement because a crooked cop killed him (my opinion). I feel bad for Ramsey Orta for the hell he is going through for making the video but that would of been a he said/she said situation without video evidence, with the cop coming out on top (of course). On the video, Ramsey said “police beating up on people.” In no way did I see him “beat up.” I did not know Mr. Garner had a serious crime of violence in his background as to a beating of a neighbor that left his home looking like a crime scene (according to this book).
This man didn’t need to die, he was not street trash, he worked hard for his family.
The Author said, he found himself asking about Garner the person as the policy issues faded from mind and like the Author I found I liked Mr. Garner too. Mr. Garner didn’t sound like a selfish man, same clothes, same shoes, old vehicle. When he could be with his family, he was. He was loved by family and friends. He is truly missed.
Thank you Good Reads, Random House and Matt Taibbi
Cherie