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Editor's Note: This story was updated Dec. 12 to correct an error in the fourth paragraph in the description of the chokehold applied to Eric Garner. Also, the first name of Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo was incorrect in the initial report.
The day after a grand jury decided it would not indict a New York police officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner on Staten Island, the New York City Commission of Religious Leaders asked that any protests arising from the matter be peaceful.
“We all agree that these protests must remain peaceful, for the benefit of our communities, our children, and as an example to all who hold peace dear,” said the Dec. 4 statement, which was signed by Cardinal Dolan and Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio among others.
“We know that demonstrations can be a constructive part of this process, when they call attention to essential concerns and mobilize individuals and government to act,” the religious leaders said. “Peaceful discourse of this nature will ensure the progress we all hope to achieve.”
A Staten Island police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, placed a chokehold July 17 on Garner, 44, who was unarmed. Chokeholds are banned by the New York Police Department.
The episode was captured with a smartphone and later posted on YouTube. In the video, Garner can be heard saying repeatedly, “I can’t breathe.” A Staten Island grand jury did not indict Pantaleo for his actions in Garner’s death. The Dec. 3 release of the grand jury report preceded protests in New York and elsewhere.
The religious leaders’ statement did not comment directly on Garner’s death, the grand jury’s decision or the initial protests. “As we move forward we need to work to avoid destructive violence, build trust and create a more just city in which the dignity of each person as made in the image of God is respected and enhanced,” they said.
An AP story cited police union officials and the officer’s lawyer as saying that Pantaleo used “a legal takedown move” because Garner was resisting arrest. Garner’s death was ruled a homicide and the medical examiner found that a chokehold contributed to it.
Those protesting the grand jury’s decision argued race was a factor in Garner’s death because he was black and the officer is white.
A majority of the signers of the religious group’s statement were Catholic clergy. Along with Cardinal Dolan and Bishop DiMarzio, they included Auxiliary Bishop John J. O’Hara; Msgr. Kevin Sullivan, executive director of archdiocesan Catholic Charities; Father James Massa, chancellor of the Brooklyn Diocese; Father Gregory Chisholm, S.J., pastor of St. Charles Borromeo parish and Resurrection Chapel in the Harlem section of Manhattan, and Father Carlos Rodriguez, administrator of Holy Cross parish in the Bronx.
Two rabbis also signed the statement, as did the president and executive director of the Council of Churches of the City of New York.
“I certainly fully support this statement,” Father Chisholm told CNY Dec. 9. “It’s a very encouraging gathering of clergy across many religious traditions.” He added it was appropriate that even outside a time of crisis, the group would want to come together and think, from their respective religious traditions, about “what God is calling us to be in this city.”
“I believe we can bring light, ultimately, in the midst of a great deal of darkness,” he added.
Father Chisholm was asked what the average person in the pew can do. “We have to be really about making sure that communication, that bridges, are continually being built between those who serve our communities,” such as the police, “and any of our communities themselves,” Father Chisholm said. “We can’t have communities that live in isolation and live in an antagonistic relationship with the power structure. That just doesn’t work.”
Since Garner’s death, St. Charles Borromeo parish has held monthly gatherings, essentially conversations—separate meetings for adults and teenagers—about the subject matter. The next such gathering is planned for January.
Jesuit Father James Martin, editor at large of America magazine and the author of several books, said in a Dec. 4 Facebook posting, “You can admire police officers and still admit that they made a tragic mistake. You can support the justice system and still feel that justice has not been done. You can uphold the rule of law and still feel that the law is not being applied justly.”
“I’m not a police officer, so I don’t know what that life is like. I’m not an African-American, so I don’t know what that life is like either,” he added. “But when a man says, ‘I can’t breathe,’ you should let him breathe. And if he dies after saying it, then you should have let him breathe.”
The NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund denounced the lack of an indictment in the case. “This decision is extremely disappointing and personal to me because I grew up in Staten Island and am very familiar with the location where this incident occurred,” said a Dec. 3 statement by the fund’s president and director, Sherrilyn Ifill. “The grand jury’s decision calls into question whether justice is a reality or just an ideal in America, especially for African-American men who continue to be targeted by law enforcement.”
The Staten Island grand jury decision followed by one week a St. Louis grand jury that did not issue any indictments in the police shooting of an unarmed African-American 18-year-old, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo. The lack of an indictment caused the city to erupt once more in violence, with businesses looted and set afire, and protestors arrested and injured by police.
CNY Staff and Catholic News Service contributed to this report.
