Garner ‘murdered unjustly,’ widow says

Eric Garner’s widow said Sunday that her husband was “murdered unjustly” by New York police, but tried to downplay the role race played in his death.

{mosads}“I don’t even feel like it’s a black and white thing honestly,” Esaw Garner said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” just days after a grand jury declined to indict a police officer for her husband’s death. 

Still, Esaw Garner said she still hoped that the officer, Daniel Pantaleo, would face charges at some point, and that her husband’s death only made her worry more about her sons’ interactions with police.

“It would only be right, not only for my husband but for all the other young men and women,” Garner said after asked if she’d still like her day in court.

Rev. Al Sharpton, appearing with Esaw Garner, said he was helping to plan protests that he hoped would make it easier to secure civil right charges against law enforcement in these sorts of cases.

The New York grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo just over a week after a grand jury in Ferguson, Mo., decided against charges for white police officer in the death of Michael Brown.

“We’ve got to go bring protest to where it goes into legislation,” Sharpton said. “Otherwise, we’ll be back here again.”

Both Sharpton and Esaw Garner said they didn’t want to sugarcoat Eric Garner’s past, saying he had served time in jail. But Esaw Garner pushed back on claims that Garner resisted arrest before his death, and Sharpton insisted that he would have been treated differently had he been white.

“She has tried to say ‘I don’t want to deal with race as the issue,’ ” Sharpton said.

“We’re not talking about making victims saints. But we’re talking about not giving a pass to police who do what’s wrong. You can’t have two wrongs and make one civil right.”