I found this nonfiction book hard to put down. It’s about Eric Garner and his death at the hands of overzealous police, but it’s also about all the lawyers and judges and policies in place to protect police officers and encourage the harassment of black and brown people.

Garner comes off as a sympathetic though flawed individual. The police officers and other members of law enforcement do not come off looking good at all. This is not about good cops; it’s about the bad ones who go unpunished.

I’ve been a fan of Matt Taibbi’s journalism for years, and this book cemented my admiration for his work. He criticizes liberals and conservatives alike for allowing this sort of discriminatory policing to be encouraged. Garner was a large man and an easy bust, and because of various quotas police officers were given, he was often arrested for his petty crimes. He didn’t get worked up when he was arrested for actually committing a crime, but they harassed him when he’d just be doing his laundry at the laundry mat or something, too.
The man who took the famous video of Garner was also harassed endlessly after the video went viral the world over. Some of the minor crimes he did commit, but many of the busts were entirely fabricated to get him to cop to a plea.

The descriptions of police brutality are hard to read. What this book is more concerned about, though, are things like why the prosecuting attorney Dan Donovan brought in 50 witnesses and yet failed to bring an indictment against the officer who did the illegal chokehold. (Daniel Pantaleo is still a police officer despite numerous abuse allegations, including completely unfounded strip searches conducted on the street in broad daylight.) Moreover, countless lawyers tried to get the grand jury information unsealed, to no avail. What did they have to hide? Donovan successfully ran as a Republican to fill the seat by congressman Michael Grimm, who’d been indicted on twenty federal counts. You may remember him as the lovely man who told a reporter (while a TV crew was filming) that he’d throw him over the balcony.
The reason the Garner case made so much news is because it was all caught on video. “Absent the cellphone videos, in other words, nobody would like have heard how Eric Garner really died.” But in this way his case was the exception.

I was shocked to hear all the obstacles a person has to go through to get a substantiated abuse charge against a police officer. All we, the public, ever hear about are the families who get million-dollar settlements. They represent virtually none of the cases actually alleged.

This is an important book about race and policing—not just individual police officers but the system as a whole. I could quote huge passages from this book. Highly recommend.

What shoukd you do if the person on the ground is saying over and over "I cant breathe". This is what Eric Garner was saying as the New York City Police had him pinned down on the ground. This book Is mainly about the brutal killing of Eric Garner by the New York City Police. Matt Tabbi, the author, goes into very great detail about the events leading up to this tragedy and also the aftermath. The book really opens your eyes to the kinds of people the police are dealing with on a daily basis and also the mentality of the police force themselves. It tells how the City had gone from dirty, rundown, drug and rat infested, to a City that people were proud to call home. An outsider can get some idea about living conditions in the area and what makes some people do things that they know are not legal, but really think that is the only way to feed and protect their families. Could the police have handled the situation differently and avoided the death of Eric? Matt Tabbi also gives details of some other cases around the country which certainly gave me cause to wonder why the police handle some situations in the way that they do. I totally understand that they must be frustrated at only having to deal with mostly unpleasant duties, but where should they draw the line between doing their job and showing some compassion to the people they are dealing with. Although this book had a lot of political undertones,, it was necessary for this particular story.

Taint I can’t breathe
This book is written in a lively style, obviously intended to be read in a hurry, just the book for nowadays, but with no real moral analysis except a curious Dickensian aloofness to lives of total futility led by people of low utility. Taibi opts to deal with the killing of Eric Garner by following exhaustively the personal life of his subject and his almost countless number of wives, children, acquaintances and friends and then delineate with excruciating detail, in the second part of the book, the arcane baroque vicissitudes and inefficiencies of the US legal and political system.
As regards the human stories here, what is one to think of someone who spends hours watching TV or buying expensive sneakers, who ignores his many unplanned kids with a woman who at twenty years of age has already been through two (maybe more) fathers for her children and who even has one in the oven when you meet her online where she lies to Eric about her age and pregnancy by a man she just broke up with? Taibi ends up testing liberals’ ability to empathize with the downtrodden.
And the police are, from the start just criminals with uniforms on. In official positions on official occasions, they act and talk like your racist uncle when he gets drunk on Thanksgiving – if he were weaponized. They are even worse than that Serpico image. They engage in all kinds of sniveling manipulation of laws and politicians, and undermine any macho shine they have in the movies. Basically, they’re depicted as paper-pushers who occasionally have to rough up people they’d never be seen dead around.
The only conclusion that you can reach isn’t that there are victims and victimizers here, but that the whole bunch of these characters should somehow be put out of their misery. When his lowlifes use an increase in cigarette taxes to increase their black market trade, Taibi gushes with praise for their entrepreneurial flair and empathizes with them for their constant sojourns in jail for selling illegal cigarettes, loitering, selling hard and soft drugs, and having nothing permanent, even their families. Given his political orientation, it’s not a surprise that he ignores the deprivation and misdirection that makes someone become a policeman, though.
One good thing about the book is that it takes you, if you’re a white person, to places where, unless you’re addicted to a dangerous drug, you’d never go, or even want to go, while being safe and cozy in your own home. You get to observe these poor devils scrounging for a buck, having to live on cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, junk food, video games, and TV. One guy out of prison wants to become a “commercial driver”, but “he could never get excited for long about any of these options”. In a whitey world of comfort, you might never know that getting excited was a prerequisite for a job choice after a prison stint. But Taibi points such things out, apparently sympathetically.
I think Taibi’s idea was to make Garner look loveable. This is a guy who he describes as getting arrested for crack at 18 and then “reforming” by resorting to offenses with shorter life jail time, weighing 350 pounds (while joking about eating a whole pizza as if it were a slice), having a memory for football scores but nothing else, running a sales tax cigarette racket (he “employed” others), letting his kids be taken away by social services because sometimes it’s the best option and then having even more children, being beyond sloppy by wearing the same clothes every day, but paying $400 for a jacket and wearing expensive sneakers, wanting to argue with everyone for no reason, being an asthmatic who likes to smoke etc.
This depiction backfires miserably. Before reading this book, I thought that the only evil creatures in the Rabelaisian idiocy that reigns in America were the crooked, uneducated, lazy, cruel cops. It’s clear that after reading this book they are not the only messed up dudes.
The second part of the book, dealing with the politics of New York, could have been interesting at half its length, but then it wouldn’t have dealt with the unending intricacies and subterfuges of New York’s laws and politics. Whole pronouncements from courts are quoted extensively and sometimes completely. It gets so bad that Taibi has to continuously paraphrase, e.g. “in other words, he basically told him to shove it.” There is a virtual phone book’s worth of names of the main and minor characters. I don’t think that anyone who lives out of the state could care about these details, especially since they are like grains of sand shifting in the political wind every day.
Who is the book for? Probably some law students would really find the endless machinations of the courts, lawyers, police organizations, and advocacy groups, along with the “Broken Windows” and “Stop and Frisk” policies’ implications riveting. Racists, unfortunately, will find the depiction of such an alien culture mind-boggling and maybe gratifying. I can’t see, though, that fans of Taibi’s contributions to Rolling Stone and his appearances on Democracy Now, will be satisfied a book, which should, perhaps, have been reduced to a long article.

Taibbi examines the death of Eric Garner, who was killed after a police officer applied an illegal choke hold during an arrest. Taibbi provides a profile of Garner, a fixture in his Staten Island neighbourhood. He also looks at the police philosophy that led to the infamous stop and frisk policy and widespread abuse of the minority men who were targeted.

Eric Garner was murdered on the street in Staten Island in July 2014.

Matt Taibbi has provided an amazingly well researched and master work documenting the crime and bringing Eric Garner to life. He visits family members, friends, customers, co-workers and looks at Garner's life without the tarnish and tragedy of his death.

The MOST interesting part of this book is how it developed. Taibbi started out writing a book about the facts, the policy of stop and frisk and how it can (and does) go wrong. What developed was something much deeper, humanizing a victim.

RIP Eric Garner. You have so many family and friend who love you and miss you every day.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this fantastic book.

A thorough look at the numerous factors that lead to the murder of Eric Garner by the NYC police department. Taibbi travels through Garner's life, delving into the complexities of a man who lost his life due to sanctioned racism and beaurocratic indifference. Taibbi never paints Garner as anything but a human full of flaws who spent his entire life under the boot heel of a police department rife with corruption and racism. He exhaustively presents the whys and how's of how such indifference to the lives of common people came to be commonplace. In the end, we get to know Eric Garner through the lens of of his looming and senseless death. As much as you wish there was someway to change what you know is coming in the book, you are constrained by reality much as Eric Garner was from the moment he was born.

This is a brilliant, well-researched book that brings Eric Garner to life. Wonderfully executed and stunning in its scope, Mr. Taibbi shows that racism is back with a vengeance in America. I cannot praise this book enough. It is heart breaking in its attention to the minor details that keep racist attitudes alive. The criminal justice system is shown for what it is: a foul swamp of white privilege. The clear-eyed reporting of the author is highly readable and he keeps the pages turning as the full history of law enforcement in America's cities is laid bare in all its corruption. A masterwork for our times..

I normally write reviews a bit after I finish a book, but I had to leave this review as soon as I finished this book. In one word, this book is powerful. I am sure we all heard of the Eric Gardner case . This man was put on a chokehold at the hands of one police officer ( who had many excessive force complaints) against him.. Yes, Mr. Gardner sold cigarettes but is that a valid reason for him to have dies? I think not. This book is about so much more than Mr . Gardner. It gives us background on him, his family and his life. There is much more information provided here that was not touched on by the media. Yes, the man did things he should not have, but to this I say, "he without sin, cast the first stone ". I ask everyone to read this book and come to your own conclusion. This would be a very good entry for a book club read to see how people perceive what they are given in this book. This book has the potential to be an eye opener and I for one will recommend this book as much as I can. Thank you NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the advanced copy of this book in return for my honest review. Kudos to the author for writing it and the publishing company for bringing it to us, the reader.

A look inside some of the incidents of law enforcement officers killing people of color. By people of color I mean mostly black people, and some brown people. Many of these incidents have been televised but at times I think the general populace has become inured to these occurrences. Must be the times, and the attitudes, even from the top down. Agree or disagree but some of these have been outright murder, with no justification, and in some cases the responsible police officers have been held accountable. Some may have had some justification, or at least been trumped up to seem so. And it is likely some were righteous self-defense, or at least no other plausible outcome. This is not just a rehash of past cases as seen by the public but also a look at the relatives and loved ones who suffered the loss. It is also a look inside the politics of the law enforcement agencies, and the justice system. It is natural for a supervisor to defend the workers assigned and for a person’s peers to quickly pounce to the defense. Some of the incidents in this story defy common sense, but that also seems to be a bit of a plague in our current times. While the author does a bit of postulating, as do we all, there are many valid issues brought to light. While many of these incidents are of recent memory, those of us who have been around for a while will also recall some of the more distant past incidents. My curiosity as to the author’s method focuses on the reference to many movies, a person or an episode reminiscent of a scene from some box office nugget, or an HBO series. As a reader, I do not watch movies, or HBO shows. I read, thus the author’s references were meaningless to me

Although I've read quite a few books dealing with unjustified killings of mostly black men, I'm still shocked at how the systemic racism inherent in the criminal justice system conspires to twice victimize those who are unfortunate enough to get caught up in the system. First by death, and then by the denial of justice.Matt Taibbi takes a look here at the killing of Eric Garner who was basically choked to death and despite the whole world seeing a man saying " I can't breathe" eleven times no one has been held responsible for his death. What Taibbi does in this book is what the media failed to do in the aftermath of Garner's killing. He humanizes the person that is Eric Garner. He extensively talks to family members, friends, shop owners, customers, other hustlers and constructs for the reader what life for Eric Garner looked like on a daily basis, and how all the forces of his past, plus the politics and the history of policing coalesced that fateful day, July 17, 2014.

"Garner was caught in the crossfire of a thousand narratives that had little or nothing to do with him personally. Everything from a police commissioner’s mania for statistics to the opportunistic avarice of real estate developers had brought him in contact with police that day."

He writes with a confident knowing prose and portions of the book have the feel of a novel as he details the area and various characters in and around Staten Island, where Eric Garner spent most of his time. The bureaucracy that keeps bodies moving through the criminal justice system is put under a microscope here and will have readers shaking their heads as to how easily it is to ruin someone's life because no one truly cares about what is going on and why the corruption is allowed to go unabated. Taibbi certainly makes it clear that some lives are valued over others and all the data coming out of the NYC police department, court and jail back this up.

Pedro Serrano is an officer that decided to tape his superiors and his evidence was used in the lawsuit to end the practice of stop and frisk. Some of his comments and taped conversations are chilling and give excellent insight into how a culture of fear and loathing is created in the average police officer. He was actually told by a deputy inspector to stop young black men.

“The problem was what?” McCormack said. “Male blacks. And I told you at roll call, I have no problem telling you this, male blacks, fourteen to twenty, twenty-one. I said this at roll call.”

These kinds of inclusions along with looks at the charging and negotiating of crimes process, the district attorney and defense attorney chess games makes this book hum along. By the books' end you will think of Eric Garner differently and hopefully that difference will forever change how you understand the "system."

Matt Taibbi started out to write a policy book with the Garner killing as central to talk about how models of policing, like stop and frisk can go horribly wrong and the effects of that. He ended up with a very different book, because when he got to Bay St., in Staten Island, NY and begun talking to people he developed a real liking for Eric, and the focus of the project became flushing out the story of who Eric Garner was. And by altering the course of this book hoped to change the impression of Eric Garner from political symbol to human being who was loved and appreciated by friends and family like. I think readers will be pleased by Taibbi's decision to change current and will agree that he has succeeded in making the impression that he ultimately sought. Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for providing an advanced ecopy. Book publishes Oct. 24, 2017

Incredible shrinking world – for blacks

Eric Garner died for nothing. He had been harassed by police for years. They went to extraordinary lengths to taunt him and keep him in the criminal justice system. Finally, one day police pulled up and sat in their car because Garner was across the street from his usual spot, using his huge bulk to break up a fight. With the fight over, the police attacked – Garner. He clearly had not been selling loose cigarettes, but that’s what they wanted to arrest him for. The rest is history.

Matt Taibbi’s visceral, disturbing and grinding book adds the missing context. He traces the lives of Garner and his family members, the cast of characters present on that fateful day, as well the police, lawyers and prosecutors involved. It’s a real life journey through the Twilight Zone, where the universe closes in, Garner has less and less space to live, and ultimately, no air to breathe. It’s an ugly reality for millions, as police policy is to be extremely strict with blacks and Hispanics, and then claim their areas are high crime, needing even stricter policing. Police on Staten Island routinely stopped blacks and Hispanics, beat them as desired (the opening chapter of I Can’t Breathe is particularly revolting), and humiliated them by often strip searching them right on the street, usually it seems, with no grounds whatsoever.

The criminal justice system further tortures them, with absurd and unprovable charges, absurdly high cash bail, multiple court appearances and endless additional arrests. And the goal is – what exactly? To make them move away? Or just to fulfill quotas. Taibbi shows the police union actually negotiating the monthly stop and arrest quotas for its members. So they round up the usual suspects, again and again. It is very sick, and sickening. Taibbi is clearly one of the sickened; he is unable to remain neutral.

The man most responsible for the protests following the Garner killing was Ramsey Orta, who videoed it. Police have been taking their revenge ever since. They even broke into his home, wielding not guns but cameras, taunting him with “You made a video – We make a video!” They wouldn’t let his naked wife dress, and tore the place apart. They follow his every move by tracking his mobile, and arrest him continually. He is now fearful they will kill him, because they publicly announced he is suicidal.

The point is it wasn’t just Eric Garner. All kinds of lives have been altered and often ruined in this ongoing process of state harassment. The system is clearly rotting before our eyes. The complete waste of it all is disheartening. It makes I Can’t Breathe a frightening document of our time.

David Wineberg