I am rarely offended by anything, but I was really offended (a more accurate term would be 'pissed off') by the statement that Patrick J. Lynch, president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association [i.e. the police union], issued directly after today's announcement that the grand jury had declined to bring any charges against the police officer who killed Eric Garner.
Here is the statement in full:
"While we are pleased with the Grand Jury's decision, there are no winners here today. There was a loss of life that both a family and a police officer will always have to live with. It is clear that the officer's intention was to do nothing more than take Mr. Garner into custody as instructed and that he used the take down technique that he learned in the academy when Mr. Garner refused. No police officer starts a shift intending to take another human being's life and we are all saddened by this tragedy."
I suppose it bothers me that the whole thing feels smug. And it bothers me that the essential aim is justification, defense, and pr spin. And it bothers me that Lynch lies about the "officer's intention" which was clearly not simply "to take Mr. Garner into custody", but to subdue a non-violent suspect by choking him and, at one point, grinding his head into the pavement. And it bothers me that he mentions that the officer had been taught the "take down technique" at the academy, but fails to mention that that very technique had been forbidden by the NYPD since the 1990s. And it bothers me that he uses the impersonal phrase "loss of life" as though the killing of Eric Garner by a scrum of police officers was just some regrettable but unavoidable accident.
And it bothers me that Lynch fails, or refuses, to offer even the most perfunctory expression of condolence for the family's loss. But, above all, it bothers me that he virtually equates the family's and the police officer's suffering. He mentions both in the same sentence, as though the aftermath of Eric Garner's death is just as painful for the killer as for the bereaved family of the man he killed.
That's a lot of insensitivity, arrogance, and obnoxiousness to pack into a single paragraph.