Protesters poured into a street outside a Staten Island shop where police chokehold victim Eric Garner died last July – and warned of mayhem similar to the turmoil in Ferguson, Missouri – after a grand jury decided not to indict a white New York City police officer in the case, the
New York Post reports.
"They should react in an uproar. Just like they failed Ferguson, they failed us," Heather Ewig, a friend of Garner, told the Post as a crowd began to gather near .
Garner's stepfather, Benjamin Carr, railed at the decision as well, decrying "two sets of laws."
"It's just a license to kill a black man," he told the Post. "Who can control the police department? They can shoot me . . . down and nobody can say anything. Imagine if it was your kid? It's just like getting a knife and stabbing my heart. You might as well choke me."
The Post reports that as Carr spoke, a protester hurled a garbage can at a nearby WABC TV truck – an act Carr condemned.
"I don't want it, and Eric wouldn
't want it," Carr told the Post.
Widely circulated cellphone video of Garner's July 17 arrest on a charge of selling loose cigarettes showed New York City Police Department officer Daniel Pantaleo wrestling him to the sidewalk.
The Medical Examiner's Office ruled the death a homicide.
Outside the Staten Island courthouse where the grand jury met, people who gathered also criticized the panel's decision.
The ruling follows a Nov. 24 grand jury rejection of an indictment in the Aug. 9 shooting death of unarmed black man
Michael Brown, 18, by white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
"It's messed up," Jose Jimenez, who described himself as a Garner family friend, told the Post. "[Pantaleo] should pay for what he did. He put that man in a chokehold and he was screaming 'I can't breathe. I can't breathe.' It’s right there on the videotape. That's so messed up, the family is going to be crying more."
The NYPD has geared up for protests by adding hundreds of officers across the city, the Post reports, including at Union Square, Times Square and at the city's bridges, tunnels and parks.
Some groups have called for mass demonstrations at Union Square, the Post reports.
"When the grand jury announces its decision, members of the community and all those concerned about justice are called to go to Union Square North in Manhattan immediately. Justice for Eric Garner! Charge the Killer Cop with Murder!" the group Stop Mass Incarceration said, the Post reports.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.