Ten Years since Eric Garner's Murder [Transcript]

Lee Camp is the former host and head writer of Redacted Tonight, the host of the podcast Moment of Clarity, and The Lee Camp Show as well as co-host of Government Secrets with Graham Elwood, and Common Censored with Eleanor Goldfield. Camp is the author of titles such as Moment of Clarity, Bullet Points and Punch Lines, and most recently Dangerous Ideas. He co-manages the news platform RadIndieMedia.com, and his newest show America Inc. with Lee Camp is on Breakthrough News. Camp had a wide-ranging conversation with Plea for the Fifth, that will be published in four parts. The first in our series focuses on the ten-year anniversary of Eric Garner's killing by police. Become a Plea for the Fifth subscriber to watch the interview.

Sean Ghazala: Lee top of mind when I reached out to you was yesterday's somber anniversary. Yesterday marked 10 years since the killing of Eric Garner. And just to remind our audience, July 17, 2014, NYPD officers approached Eric Garner on Bay Street here on Staten Island on the suspicion of selling individual cigarettes from packs or what New Yorkers call Loosies. He was a 43-year-old African American man and was killed by Officer Daniel Pantaleo in a prohibited chokehold while he was being arrested. And the video generated widespread I mean locally, but nationally outrage and maybe was one of the first times we watched an officer kill a black American on a cell phone video.

Lee Camp: Yeah, I think so.

Sean Ghazala: Garner was heard saying I can't breathe 11 times laying down on the sidewalk, and was the was the father of children and grandchildren. So, Lee talk to us about your view of police, the killing of Eric Garner and the countless others since then, and the lack of any meaningful reform we've had in these past 10 years.

Lee Camp: Great question. Yeah. Eric Garner. I think you might be right maybe the first time we saw a police officer murder a black person on camera, like you said, doing hardly anything selling loose cigarettes. Apparently, they knew him well as someone who would stand there and do this. So, this was also not like some oh my god moment. On top of that we later learn that Pantaleo, I think his name was, had a history where he'd used these illegal chokeholds before, you know, and been lightly reprimanded, like a slap on the wrist type thing. On top of that. We know that the guy who took the video, I think his name was Ramsey [Orta] was chased by the police. I don't mean like, physically, but I mean, like they, they basically made sure to find a reason to prosecute him and go after him and ultimately served a lot of time in prison, you know, technically not for videotaping them. But that's really what it was, it was them putting a target on him because he had revealed to the world their behavior. But then you broaden that out beyond just Eric Garner.

We know that there's been no decrease in police murder of innocent people across this country. It has not decreased, it's only increased. Last year, I believe, was the largest ever on record, with, you know, more than 1,200 murders by police. But believe it or not, that is roughly half of the actual number. We learned from the Lancet Medical Journal that most in their research most something like 55% of all murders by police are not actually written down and reported as murders by police. They're, you know, reported as a heart attack or, you know, inability to breathe or something. And they don't actually get written up as murders by police. So, the 1,200 is the ones where they actually call it a police murder, whereas you double that if you want the actual number of people killed by police.

And I always like to point to other countries and say, 'well, what are other countries doing?' Well, Denmark, and Switzerland, for example, often have years where their police kill zero. Not a single person is often murdered by Denmark or Swiss police. But then you have a country like Iceland, where from their founding, they've had one person murdered by their police. This is just not a common thing in other countries, in a lot of the countries. In the US it is so aggressively common and it has to do with a completely racial racist and fascist police system and you know, right wingers would say right now, would yell 'What do you mean racist? More white people are killed by police than Black people!' Well, yes, but if you look at first of all, the percentage of black people in this country, far more percentage wise are killed by police than white people. But beyond that, if you look at the stories behind these people that get killed by police, most of the white people are waving a gun. That's the white people that get killed by police. Most of the black people are not waving any weapon, they're reaching for their wallet or nothing at all, or being choked for selling cigarettes. So, it's a very different situation. But yeah, it has to do with an impressively racist - I mean, our policing system, which is rather unique, some other countries have adopted our insane policing system, but rather unique originated from slave patrols. I mean, before slave patrols, there was not this idea of 'Oh, in order to have a society, you need to have guys with guns on most corners, ready to shoot people.' And with slave patrols, it was basically any white person in the town who has their own gun, because we can't supply them, you come with your own gun, and you can just find black people and either arrest them or shoot them. And that then slowly evolved over the years to this. You know, it was insane back then. And it's insane now. This insane policing system that's largely unaccountable to people, these police commit violations over and over and over again. And yet worse, they get moved around from department to department, but often they just get a slap on the wrist. And you know, nothing's changing.

I mean, I just did a segment on my livestream the other day about, or yesterday, about body cameras and how if you actually look into what body cameras have achieved over the past 10 years, it's essentially nothing. Because the push for body cams largely came from the surveillance state, and police. That footage is never revealed, or rarely revealed. And it's largely just used for the police to use it for their means. It's rarely used for the public to actually prosecute a police officer. And even in the Derek Chauvin, George Floyd killing. Well, that wasn't a body cam that we found, we saw the video that went viral that created Black Lives Matter that was cell phone footage, so yeah, body cams were pushed by the surveillance state and they're largely bullshit.