National United Youth Council Delivers Demands to Staten Island DA Over Eric Garner Death
The National United Youth Council delivered six demands concerning the Eric Garner case to the Staten Island District Attorney on Wednesday. The main demand asked that Richmond County District Attorney Daniel Donovan turn the case over to the U.S. Attorney because NUYC claims the case has been compromised already.
Salaam Ismial, director of NUYC, said the case has already been compromised because police arrested the video tape witness on gun charges, so the same prosecutor will be prosecuting the police officer as well as the witness, and the prosecutor has a strong relationship with the police.
The other demands also include an end to the street crime unit, dismantling the "broken windows" concept because "it does no more than harass and create arrests, unnecessary arrests, that are only putting more people in jail and not having any quality effect on the community", said Ismail.
Other demands are prosecution of all officers involved and the firing of all EMT's involved for acting unprofessionally, as well as the resignation of NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton.
And lastly, "Mayor de Blasio should hold a town hall meeting in Staten Island, as he has been operating this issue from City Hall and not operating in the face the people. So he can hear from the people, hear from the black and Latino men that have been harassed, have been brutalized by the police over and over again," said Ismial.
The NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., on Monday asked the Staten Island DA to immediately charge the police officers involved in the death of Eric Garner with homicide, and for the Mayor and the NYPD Commissioner to scrutinize training and policies.
Green Party Attorney General candidate Ramon Jimenez told reporters on Monday, "It certainly should be taken out of the hands of the Staten Island DA. Donovan is very close to the police in Staten Island, we don't know if there will be clarity."
Jimenez suggested instead a call for the appointment of a special prosecutor or for a federal indictment of the police involved.
"This whole matter with Eric Garner is not isolated in a bucket; this is an issue that is affecting people across the country. On one end there is this big effort to stop crime and violence that affects a lot of the urban communities these days. But then there is how effectively they use the policing system to do that, and they use paramilitary type of means which does nothing but exacerbate the problem, violate people's rights and create, what is now, a total uproar," said Ismial. "So the thing is we have to be able to assess is what the police are doing, how effectively they are doing their respective jobs, and put the kind of mechanisms in place so these kinds of things won't happen, like what happened in the Eric Garner case, and in other cases like Eric Garner."
The National United Youth Council is a service organization and advocacy group, based in Elizabeth, New Jersey with chapters in New York, North Caroline, Washington, D.C., and chapters being established in California, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.
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