F1,

The ranking officer is guilty as well. Again, Garner made the cops lose "face" in front of the crowd by resisting, so "they" were gonna get him back. It's the "us against them" attitude that Dude mentioned in his post about police. Like a true coward, the ranking officer didn't tell Pantaleo to release the hold, because again "it's us against them"
She has to live with her (in)decision for the rest of her life.Female cops (in this region) are super aggressive usually and go overboard to prove they are one of the guys.And in the "us versus them" mentality the only color is Blue.She failed as the ranking officer on the scene.

I'm gonna assign most of the blame on the guy who felt the life force drain from a guy he was choking and continued choking him anyway.

I've heard local radio interviews from ex-cops..on both sides of this issue..and they all agree that the incident could have been diffused much earlier.Cops in that precinct had arrested Garner several times before...so they had a lot of experience in dealing with him..and knew what he was and wasn't capable of.

He absolutely should not have resisted, and just taken the L...got booked and paid the fine


Good point about addressing the official policy and guidelines which ultimately allowed the tragedy to happen and for no indictments. I think that officers pick and choose when to use discretion in following the letter of the law regarding guidelines.The cop surely could have released the chokehold much earlier....He kept it on so long that he was strangling a corpse at one point.