Even for jaded New Yorkers, this is sick.
A television reporter doing live coverage of the protests Wednesday outside Rockefeller Center in New York got pranked by a well-dressed couple who laughingly re-enacted the police chokehold that preceded the death of a New York man in July.
As WPIX reporter Allison Kaden did her report, a man in the background grabbed his female companion by the neck from behind, mimicking the grip a police officer placed on Eric Garner while arresting him for selling illegal cigarettes.
Garner died shortly after that confrontation in a death ruled a homicide by a New York medical examiner. On Wednesday, a grand jury decided not to indict the officer in Garner’s death, leading to protests like the one Kaden was covering.
Kaden, who had her back to the couple, did not see what happened, nor did the studio anchors seem to notice. But plenty of viewers did.
Protesters might think the grand jury’s decision was evidence of a judicial system inherently biased against black men in confrontations with law enforcement officers. Others might be tired of seemingly endless – and too-often opportunistic – protests against a judicial system that’s working the way it was set up to.
But almost nobody, except apparently a couple of well-heeled people on the streets of New York, thinks it’s funny to mock a man’s dying moments.
Eric Garner Death Mocked: Couple Photobombs Live TV With Chokehold: How disrespectful! http://t.co/U9ij4k5Q6J
— Allison Fry Alcott (@OfficAllison) December 4, 2014
I can’t even joke about this. I hate this.SEE IT: Couple jokingly reenacts Eric Garner’s chokehold death on live TV http://t.co/2ebb42ZRJ0
— VLAHOPG2 (@Vlahopg2) December 4, 2014
Even for jaded New Yorkers, this is sick.
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