‘I can’t breathe’: Eric Garner remembered on the 10th anniversary of his chokehold death

By Karen Matthews, The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Wednesday marks 10 years since the death of Eric Garner at the hands of New York City police officers made “I can’t breathe” a rallying cry.

Bystander video showed Garner gasping the phrase while locked in a police chokehold and spurred Black Lives Matter protests in New York and across the country. More demonstrations followed weeks later when Michael Brown, an 18-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, on Aug. 9, 2014.

Six years later, George Floyd was recorded uttering the exact same words as he begged for air while a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck, killing him and sparking a new wave of mass protests.

On Wednesday, Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, commemorated her son, noting there has since been an increase in the use of video cameras by police and changes to state law. Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who restrained Garner, was fired in 2019.

“We know that the police have a tough job, but when there’s wrongdoing, when we have those bad apples in the police department, we have to get rid of them because we don’t want to see another innocent citizen get hurt, you know, by the police or gun violence,” said Carr at the start of a march on Staten Island, the borough where her son died.

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