a police union spokesman says this was not a choke hold, but what s known as a seat belt maneuver, a common takedown tactic that s taught at the police academy. if you are speaking, can you breathe. unfortunately, he died for a number of reasons, and as the grand jury saw and the medical examiner said, it was not a choke hold that killed that person. so we feel badly that there was a loss of life, but, unfortunately, mr. garner made a choice that day to resist arrest. choke holds are not allowed by the nypd and we ll have to wait and see what the commissioner has to say about how they re going to retrain these officers and these kinds of takedown maneuvers, gretchen. all right. rick eleven that will on the streets of new york. thanks so much. so that unauthorized choke hold culprit in the death of eric garner who gasped for air telling officers over and over he was having trouble breathing as officers took him down. i can t breathe. i can t breathe. i can t breathe.
good afternoon, we start in new york. in the aftermath to the grand jury s decision in the eric garner case. any minute now, bill de blasio will hold that press conference and talk about the steps the city is taking to respond to the choke hold death of eric garner. and we ll bring that to you live as it gets underway. protesters have taken to the streets bringing traffic to a stand still in manhattan and shutting down major highways and bridges. police confirm 83 people were arrested in new york overnight. the anger spilled on to the streets across the nation. massive protests were held in major cities, including oakland, atlanta, washington, d.c. and philadelphia. at a college summit in washington today, president obama spoke about the protests. and big challenges like these should galvanize our country. should unite us around an opportunity agenda that brings
and faking. #alivewhileblack. celebrities also chiming in on social media to react to the eric garner grand jury. she warned she was going to be talking about race issues on her twitter feed. starting out with a knock at her rival iggy azealia. she s referring to eric garner. she d been ranting about that all day. she goes on to say black culture is cool, but black issues sure aren t, huh? ouch. before we go, let s take a look at our hash tag battle for today. we asked you if you thought the use of body cams would reduce the instances of police brutality. 49% of you thought it would make a difference, 51% said it wouldn t. our up close and personal view of the lighting of the rockefeller plaza tree. it s a video that s been three weeks in the making, and we ll take you right from the beginning all the way to the end, which, of course, had the
as a man who you have been listening to new york city mayor as his office and the nypd look to prevent things such as eric garner s death from happening again. i want to deal in rick leventhal, because is he live on the streets of new york city. this case raising new questions about police tactics. right? right, gretchen. what we expect to hear during this news conference at some point is about that retraining of police officers and the focussing on tactics of restraint and force that officers use to subdue suspects. obviously, a lot of attention now being placed on that choke hold, the choke hold that was used by police officers to subdue eric garner in july. a move that led to his death. the cell phone video that captured the arrest showed the 6 3 , 350 pound man resisting officers attempts to handcuff him, and that s when n wr pd officer used his arm around garner s neck to help bring him down to the ground.
particularly on the grand jury facet of this. a prominent piece of so many of these cases of police accountability. is it every appropriate when what they re considering is justice for a police officer that there is often times so closely tied to. here s the thing, the state grand jury system and in the case of staten island and in the case of ferguson and these are state grand juries that work along with state elected prosecutors in staten island. the prosecutor is elected from staten island and richmond county and in ferguson the prosecutor is elected from st. louis county. this is an indication that the state grand jury seem to be unwilling or incapable of bringing charges against police officers, even where in the case of eric garner, there s a tape which makes it clear for the world to see that excessive force was used and eric garner is dead. so, this raises substantial