I Can't Breathe

May 1, 2017

Eric Garner's death in July 2014, after a police officer on Staten Island, New York, put him in a choke hold for selling single cigarettes, was captured on video and horrified millions, with national protests contributing to the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement. Taibbi, a National Magazine Award winner and the author of three New York Times best sellers (e.g., The Divide), takes on a seminal event in race relations today.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 1, 2017
Forty-three-year-old Eric Garner was arrested for selling loosies (individual untaxed cigarettes) on a Staten Island street corner on July 17, 2014. An NYPD cop put Garner in a choke hold that led to his death minutes later. Garner's video-recorded protest as he was held face down on the pavement became a rallying cry in the Black Lives Matter movement. Journalist Taibbi takes the stark outline of this brutal moment and explains what put Garner on the street corner of Bay and Victory that day and what fatal forces intersected there. Half a century after the civil rights movement, Taibbi says, white America does not want to know this man. Readers of this brilliant work of narrative nonfiction will get to know this man and what brought him down. The book's chapters are all named for people who knew Garner or were involved in his death. This takes us away from straight chronology and into Garner's relationships: police might see him only as a 6'2, 395-pound African American selling loosies on a corner, but we get to know him as a father of four, in catastrophic health, trying to stay ahead of the rent, with the dream of retiring and finally getting to sit down. Taibbi is unsparing in his excoriation of the system, police, and courts that led to the fatal choke hold and worked to blur the abuse afterward, rooted in the NYPD's policy of showing activity through arrestsmany times manufactured or bogusthen test-a-lying in court about what happened. This is a necessary and riveting work.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2017

Video of Eric Garner's 2014 death in Staten Island, NY, went viral, giving rise to a cause celebre. The 6'3," 350-pound black man died at the hands of NYPD officers while being choked and restrained on a street corner for allegedly selling unpackaged and untaxed cigarettes. Investigative journalist Taibbi (The Divide) employs Garner's killing as a pivot to examine the personal costs, politics, and social realities of how seemingly insubstantial encounters result in the repeated police killings of black men. Sixteen brief chapters and an epilog provide backstory along with biography, portraits of family and friends, neighborhood social history, organized protests, and an expose of policing policy and court procedure. More than the detail of a single tragedy of excessive police force, Taibbi exposes attitudes, behaviors, institutional and societal failures, and mentalities that enable such repeated acts of violence under the color of law, giving rise to calls for reform and protests. VERDICT A must-read for anyone interested in examining the divide between what gets excused in the name of "law and order" and what it truly means to protect and serve. An insightful, important account for all readers.--Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2017
Rolling Stone contributing editor Taibbi (Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus, 2017, etc.) goes behind the scenes of an infamous police killing of an unarmed black man to explore a tragic national phenomenon.When Eric Garner died on July 17, 2014, on a street in the New York City borough of Staten Island, much of the available information suggested police officers fatally choked him because he was resisting arrest for illegally selling untaxed cigarettes. The coverage also demonized Garner as a physically huge, threatening black man with an extensive criminal history. In the first 100 pages of this searing expose, the author paints a portrait of Garner as a mostly well-liked street hustler trying to provide for his wife and children, a former talented athlete who eventually weighed more than 350 pounds due to lack of adequate self-care and proper health care. After deeply exploring Garner's life from a variety of perspectives, Taibbi offers detailed reporting about the out-of-control Staten Island police officers present at the death scene, especially Daniel Pantaleo, an officer prone to excessive force who had already faced at least two civil rights lawsuits. In the second half of the book, the author explores the futile efforts of the Garner family to achieve posthumous justice and also to remove Pantaleo from the NYPD. Taibbi clearly shows how numerous police personnel, as well as the Staten Island district attorney and judge, frustrated the search for truth in every way they could. What emerges from the author's superb reporting and vivid writing is a tragically revealing look at a broken criminal justice system geared to serve white citizens while often overlooking or ignoring the rights of others. "Garner's death," writes Taibbi, "and the great distances that were traveled to protect his killer, now stand as testaments to America's pathological desire to avoid equal treatment under the law for its black population." Sure to be a fixture on any reading list or curriculum regarding the woeful state of the American criminal justice system.

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