Face of Nation : Hassan Johnson was getting his head shaved on Monday at the same barber shop Eric Garner used to visit. Five years after Garner’s death in a confrontation with police in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of Staten Island, relations between law enforcement and the community have improved nominally at best, Johnson said, if only because they could not grow much worse.
“It’s us against the enemy,” Johnson, an actor, said from the barber’s chair, characterizing what he perceived to be the prevailing police attitude. “It’s like a military approach in the community. Things got so out of hand and it was so uneven and disrespectful that something had to happen.”
The case surrounding Garner’s death came to an official close on Monday, when the New York Police Department fired former officer Daniel Pantaleo, 34, who had placed Garner in a fatal chokehold five years ago and escaped criminal prosecution.
But Tompkinsville is still living with the aftermath of a case that brought it national attention and fueled the Black Lives Matter movement to denounce repeated cases of police deadly force against unarmed black men across the United States.
Police relations have long been strained, said Wumi Afruyi, a sales associate from Staten Island who works at a beauty supply store on the street where Garner was killed.
“It’s getting worse, honestly,” Afruyi said. “If the cops think we’re out to get them and that we want to retaliate, even if that’s not 100% true, they’re going to be hostile towards us, and we’re going to be hostile towards them. It’s a mess,” Afruyi said.
