The widow of Eric Garner blasted New York City law enforcement Sunday morning, saying that her husband was “murdered unjustly.”
“I really don't feel like it's a black and white thing,” Esaw Garner said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “It wasn't like it was a shock ... They knew him by name.”
Appearing with Rev. Al Sharpton, Garner told Chuck Todd that she believes her husband’s death was the culmination of prolonged harassment by police, adding that she fears for the safety of her children as well. “They harassed us,” she claimed. “And I would just say, ‘Eric, just keep walking. Don't say anything. Don't respond. You know? Don't give them a reason to do anything to you.’”
Garner said that she purchased candy so that her youngest son would not go out on Halloween, and warned her older son at college to not attend parties. “I'm so afraid of what could happen to them in the street by the police,” she added.
Garner also refuted Patrolmen's Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch’s comments from Thursday, in which he inferred that Eric Garner’s death came as a result of a choice to resist arrest.
“I'm not going to say he was a career criminal, but I'm going to say he had a past of being arrested,” said Garner. “And he never, not once, ever resisted arrest.”
Sharpton also responded to the comments, saying “to blame the victim, the insensitivity of that is striking.”
He added, “You cannot have a broken-windows policing if you have broken training, broken accountability, and police that claim that I have the right to bring you down and then later say, ‘It's resisting,’ even when the videotape says it's not.”
Sharpton plans to launch a national march against police violence in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 13. The families of Garner, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley and Trayvon Martin will be in attendance and are expected to call on Congress to investigate the cases.
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