Good to have you with us tonight, folks, thanks for watching. Today a new york city grand jury decided not to indictment an officer on the nypd in the death of eric garner. We are expecting remarks from mayor in moments. President obama reacted to the decision moments ago. There was a decision that came out today by a grand jury not to indict Police Officers who had interacted with an individual named eric garner in new york city. All of which was caught on videotape and speaks to the larger issues that weve been talking about now for the last week, the last month, the last year, and sadly, for decades. And that is, the concern on the part of too many minority communities that Law Enforcement is not working with them and dealing with them in a fair way. As i said, when i met with folks, both from ferguson and Law Enforcement and clergy and civil rights activists, i said this is an issue were dealing with too long. Im not interesting in talk. Im interesting in action. Im absolutely committed as president of the United States to making sure that we have a country in which everybody believes in the core principle that we are equal under the law. [ cheers and applause ] the new York Democratic congression congression congressional delegation had an emotional reaction. The decision is a miscarriage of justice. Its an outrage. Its a disgrace. Its a blow to our democracy. A human being was killed. He was surrounded by police men. No one else touched him and the grand jury said he didnt commit suicide. The grand jury couldnt even come up with a misdemeanor, its certainly a miscarriage of justice. How could you sit there as a juror and watch this video and issue ano indictment. Heres an individual who said i cant breath, yet the choke never stopped. I cant believe in the 21st century in the United States of america we can not get a simple indictment for the murder of a man that was caught on tape. I respect our judicial system. I respect the grand jury system. Doesnt mean i have to agree with every decision that is made and i certainly dont agree with this decision. The incident that caused garners death was well documented. He was confronted for selling untaxed cigarettes on the street. Most of the incident was caught on camera. He was placed in a choke hold by officer daniel pant laya, after being spllammed on the sidewalk he told officers he couldnt breath and died instantly. Choke holds are banned in 1993. New york city medical examiner ruled garners death a homicide saying his asthma, obesity and Heart Disease contributed to garners death. New York City Police are preparing for mass demonstrations following the grand jury decision today. Mayor de blasio said people have the right to protest and the city will respect that. First of all, theres Video Evidence which clearly shows what happened, the new york city medical examiner ruled the death homicide and third officer broke department rules by putting garnner a choke hold. And into indictment for officer panteleo. He released this statement. The other officers involved in the incident were given immunity. We have quite the discussion on this tonight. I want to know what you think, get out your cellphones, would you have voted an indictment if you were on the grand jury . Text a for yes and b for no. Well bring you results on that later in the show. Want to bring in professor, attorney, and congressman. Great to have all of you with us tonight. Karen, you first. How could the grand jury possibly come to the conclusion that the officer in question did not cause the death of mr. Garn zbl er. I could try explain that for an hour, i havent read the transcripts but i can say Police Officers are given great differenc. I look at three things. Im not a grand jury i dont get all the facts and specifics. I cant be in their position. But what i can say is if you believe they followed Police Procedure, it doesnt rise to criminal ality. The jurors are looking criminally not just civil whether he was just a bad Police Officers. I think theres a lot of confusion over what Police Procedure is. If he broke it, if he was told to do what he was trained to do, as sad as that is, then joers arent going to indict someone who is just doing their job doing what they were trained to do. And what are your thoughts considering there was a tactic used by the officer that was banned by the nypd in 1993. Im dumb founded by the fact they came back without an indictment given the fact this officer used a choke hold that had been banned. It was highly likely to cause great injury or death and did so in this case. The fact he didnt follow protocol should be at least criminal activity. I mean, people, you know, black america, and americans, should be fed up with officers being able to do this type of conduct and get away with it. It is totally unacceptable and something has to be done. I agree with our president. We need action. Talk is over. Congressmen, if this had not gone to a grand jury, as a prosecutor, do you think you could have gotten a conviction . Absolutely i know i could have got an indictment, because of how you opened your show, ed. The way i would have gone in is use the three elements, one theres a violation of police policy, that a choke hold is known to cause death, two, that the medical examiner ruled this a homicide, that the cause of death was the choke hold. So, i mean, just based on that, so, can you go to a jury, a grand jury where only probable cause has to be established. You dont have to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt, all you have to do is show probable cause that a crime was committed and that the person accused is the one that committed that crime. Because then you have the camera. You have the body cam. It wasnt a body cam. You have a better camera than a body camera. Showing what took place, a man being held on the ground, saying i cannot breath and theres no easing up. There were no aggressive moves by mr. Garner, in fact he was settling back. Folks were complaining and talking about members in congress and other places with their hands up, well hands up is symbolic for this all over america. Because mr. Garners hands were up and he was moving back. But that choke hold is what killed him. Thats how i think the case should have been present d to the grand jury and why i think the testimony and all of the proceedings that took place in the grand jury should be opened up and not secret. I would like to know whether the da asked the grand jury for an indictment when he finished presenting his case as most das to when presenting a case to the grand jury. How unusual is it having the video stap. Its not that unusual to have videotape. It is unusual in police case to have such specific evidence and see frame by frame what was going on. What procedures were being followed. The one thing i see problem is everyone positive is calling it a choke hold. It wasnt defined as a choke hold but some other type of move. So there in could lies problems with sem antics. But the definition of a choke hold is to cut off the air passages. Theres different kinds of choke holds. Exactly. Im asking you to to render judgment is this moopoor prosecr work . I think there should be a special prosecutor in these types of cases. Need to keep it up and up. You have to bring in a special prosecut prosecutor. So daryl, what is wrong here . What has to happen to get an indictment of a Law Enforcement office who are in the minds of the public, i think, is clearly wrong and goes against procedure. What does it take . If you cant get an indictment here where do you get it . I have to agree with the previous speaker. You have to have a special prosecutor with no connection to the community. Think of what were allowing to happen. Were allowing the Prosecutors Office who deals with the same Police Department day in and day out and rely on them to prove their cases every day. They are not going to go in and go aggressively against that particular officer because more than likely will have eeskffect the other officers. So the remedy is what . A federal law that says when cops are involved people from the outside should be brought in. Doesnt even have to be federal law but states. Congressmen is this the time for a presentation of a federal law. Republicans now own the senate and house. Theyre not going to do something Law Enforcement doesnt want to have happen to them. Seems the only way to remedy this relationship between prosecutors and Police Department is to have someone outside render judgment who has no connection to the police. What about that . I think unfortunately, especially those of us who want better america have to rely on federal government to look into the relationships especially with reference to the prosecutor in ferguson and stanton island so we can dig deeper into what did or didnt take place. Theres such a conversation about body cameras. You got a lot of videotape and you still cant get an indictment what the hell is a body camera going to do. Thats what i said at the press conference. Theres a big thing that body cameras will solve the problem, clearly it wont. Like in this case who do you believe . Your lying eyes or here it is clear, everything was there. So body cameras are not the answer. Theres a deeper problem in america we got to resolve. My thought is this. The shame of this case is that you can see in the beginning of the videotape, him talking, the two Police Officers standing there, a trained professional Police Officer could have diffused that situation using psychology and the training you use in the academy, apparently was not used therex never had to happen. Looking at this videotape, its like, who wants to pick a fight with the cops. Especially it looks like theres six or seven in the tape. One in the front, behind, here comes the back up. What is the urgency . Is it a training issue . Absolutely. Absolutely. A good Police Officer could have talked that man down. What about the medical examiner. Coming to the conclusion that the cause of death is a homicide. Is the medical examiner wrong. Well anyone who is dieing at the hands of someone else is going to be ruled homicide. Thats what i cant understand. How can the grand jury come to the conclusion that this mans death was not caused by the people who jumped you all over him . I dont know how they can come to that conclusion at all. I guess hopefully at some point we will learn how they came to that decision. Obviously well never agree with them. Because i agree we should believe our own eyes. It is rather clear what happened there. Theres really not much that they could tell me to defend their action, when you have a camera seeing this guy crying for help yet they continue to choke and kill him. This has to stop and it has to stop now. Another one. Karen please explain the immu immunity that the Police Officers were given. Thats up to the prosecutor. They can give immunity to whoever they want so thats what happened here. We can go on and on about the fact judges elected versus ones appointed and whether or not that has a difference in the decisions that are made. If you could do one thing to render the problem what would it be. Right now i think we have to call on all american citizens, every race, religion, and gender, and i think we need to have Peaceful Demonstrations and let individuals know that we need to have justice in america. For example i refer back to the 60s when you had bull conner and they were beating folks back then. No Police Officer was being arrested, no one was being indict indicted. We need americans to speak up and say we dont want this to happen because this is a violation of human rights right here in america. We talk about violation all over the world, we got to do it right here in america. Would it be too much to ask that they explain to the country what the hell you were thinking when you did this. Can we get some play by play and break it down why this is why i did this or why this officer, i think America Needs an explanation here. If im a black kid on the streets of america and a couple cops come up to me, im thinking today, this could go south really fast and im probably going to be pretty scared. We have to hear, i think, from the officers who were involved. They are the ones that have to explain to america right now what happened. Thank you all for being with us. Well talk more about this as we move along. Remember to answer the question on the bottom of the screen. Share your thoughts on twitter and like us on facebook. Thanks for that. We will have much more on the eric garner case, mayor about to speak, thats live here on the the ed show nrz vp frsz. The start of sneeze season. And the windblown watery eyes. Thats why puffs plus lotion is gentle on sensitive skin. So you can always put your best face forward. A face in need deserves puffs indeed. And try puffs softpack today. Wow [ narrator ] on a mission to get richard to his campbells chunky soup. Its new chunky beerncheese with beef and bacon soup. I love it. And mama loves you. Ensure active heart health. And mama loves you. I maximize good stuff, like my potassium and phytosterols which may help lower cholesterol. New ensure active heart Health Supports your heart and body so you stay active and strong. Ensure, take life in. Celebrate whats new, the bigger, better menu at red lobster with more of what you love try our newest woodgrilled combination maine lobster, extra jumbo shrimp, and salmon so hurry in and sea food differently. This is the first power plant in the country to combine solar and natural gas at the same location. During the day, we generate as much electricity as we can using solar. At night and when its cloudy, we use more natural gas. This ensures we can produce Clean Electricity whenever our customers need it. Welcome back to the ed show. We continue to follow breaking news, a grand jury in new york found no reasonable cause to indict Police Officer in the death of eric garner. 23 members needed 12 votes. Ifs. I am joined by congressmen al green of texas and reed. Congressman, your reaction to this. Is there a different reaction on capitol hill than maybe other news stories that have dealt with police incidents. Well we are stunned. We are shocked. But we also believe there is a remedy for this. I am of the opinion that we must first let people know that what has occurred today is something that is unacceptable. We also have to say to people that if we dont change this what weve said to people more specifically the Police Officers, is that this is okay. Were saying you can do this. We cannot allow the perception to exist that you can do this. We live in a world its not enough for things to be right they must look right. It doesnt look right to go behind closed doors and get a no bill in a case like this. These cases dont have to go to grand juries. They can be taken to probable cause hearings before a judge and a judge can make a decision with the eyes of the world viewing. Once we get that kind of tra transparen transparency, i believe we can get different results. Let me add one more thing, we have a duty to bring this kind of behavior to an end. We cannot allow people in the world to see us continue to go through these kinds of deliberations and end up with no results that people can understand. Because were not talking about a conviction but merely an arrest. A person being arrested. I dont know whether there will be a finding of guilt by a jury but i know theres probable cause to arrest. Thats what were talking about. Police procedures on the street, congressman, every department seems to be different. Some places choke holds are good, they are not good in new york city. Is there a federal move on how people in the streets should be approached . And an officer goes through training, what about the training, how could all of those officers being trained to do what they did to this man and then defend it . We they will shouldnt have been trained to do what occurred. There should be additional review of training. We believe what the president is propose something in line with what we need, that is additional training for peace officers. I think thats a good thing. Not all officers should be condemned. This is not a broad bush were painting with. Were talking about this incident now. We want to make sure this type of thing doesnt happen again. I do concur with you there needs to be more training and i do also believe that if we do not take the time to talk to each other about these things, rather than yell at each other, were not going to make the progress we need to get us beyond this debate. Too often were yelling at each other. People have gotten to the point they dont want people to protest. Peaceful protest is a means by which people can express themselves. Theres a movement in this country to prevent people who legitimately want to stand and protest peacefully from doing so. People who commit crime its ought to be prosecuted but we need to allow people to protest. What do you zbli i think people will be shocked and angry. I am no longer shocked. I have come to expect officers involved in situations like this s they will not get indicted and that is because of the experience decade after decade. The problem is training nor policy is relevant in this case of garner, thats because of the policy of the nypd says you may not use a choke hold and very specifically describes what a choke hold is and then the law and potential charges against an officer includes compression of the neck which was on the report that said this is a homicide by the medical examiner. The law says there is a criminal charge that attaches to actual expression of the neck that causes death. Very clear. If you cant get an indictment with all those facts and evidence and a videotape that means you cant get an diamet indictment of a Police Officer in any situation because this is the most obvious case for it. The reason that is important. The police are the government. Has right to constrain using deadly force against the people. Frac africanamericans dont believe there is any constraining of