UC-AFT Statement on Homicide of Eric Garner

The UC-AFT strongly condemns the decision of the grand jury in New York in declining to indict New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo for homicide in using a chokehold resulting in the death of Eric Garner.  We expresses our solidarity with the thousands of protestors throughout the United States and elsewhere who are peacefully expressing their outrage and frustration at the deaths of unarmed African Americans at the hands of police officers in America.  Like millions of others, we acknowledge profoundly that black lives matter.

The UC-AFT also expresses our vigorous disapproval of the New York police union head Patrick Lynch, who publicly blamed Mr. Garner for complicity in his own death and who praised Officer Pantaleo as a "good man, a mature policeman, and an Eagle Scout."  While unions have a responsibility to stand by their members, they have an even greater responsibility to uphold America's ideals of equal justice under the law and its deeper principles of racial equality and human dignity.  Police unions in particular should protect their large majority of members who work daily to enforce the law with complete fidelity to human rights and constitutional safeguards and requirements.  They also have an equal obligation to separate themselves from those members who fail to live up to these high standards.

Executive Board, UC-AFT