The Thin Blue Line or How Marlboro Killed Eric Garner

I often see “Thin Blue Line” signs living in Bay Ridge. Especially prior to the election; with all of the unrest and the tension between people of color and the police, not just here in New York, but around the country, the signs we put on our lawns seem represent the side we have taken, in what has become a ‘War’ waged between 2 groups of people who have no idea how the police should protect us in 2021, or frankly what should or shouldn’t be a crime. I remember seeing a version of the “Thin Blue Line” sign with the 9/11 lights that are projected up at the sky every year on the anniversary from Ground Zero, used as the line and I literally stopped in my tracks, partially to snap a picture of it, and honestly just to stare at it. It is a hell of a sign, I will say. I will also admit I was sort of confused and in disbelief, I was literally reading between the lines in real time. I ended up taking a picture and sending it to my friend, a pretty conservative guy living out in Texas, and he texted me back calling it ‘tacky’ and ‘inappropriate’ to use the lights to represent the ‘Thin Blue Line’. It’s just really made me think about that ‘Blue Line’, and what it means, because I think the answer is something that the population here in Brooklyn, especially the population here in Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, and the rest of South Brooklyn and Long Island, that has Fathers, Uncles, Aunts, Brothers, and Sisters, Grandparents, Neighbors, old friends they went to school with, who became officers and civil servants, understands in terms of their own opinion on the side they took, but maybe doesn’t really “get”.

Myself? My Aunt and Grandfather were both detectives for 2 decades, and I subscribe to a police model that is asked to do A LOT less, doesn’t criminalize poverty, is much more local, and doesn’t arrest or kill for large corporations. ‘The End of Policing’ by Alex S. Vitale is one of my favorite books, and has been frankly, eye opening, as to how the police can be, and just how much they do, and how that has led them to be seen in the eyes of the public as the heroes and protectors and pure, like Barney Fife and Andy Griffith. I also understand that the police are important in this country, as with any country. They defend property rights, NYPD can shoot down a plane last time I checked, and obviously when there’s a disaster, NYPD is out there pulling people out of the ruins. The police are important and their power is awesome and omnipresent.

So what’s my point here? My point, is that Eric Garner, died in the name of Marlboro, at the hands of the police, and in a city where the Mayor will redirect tax payer dollars from the black community in 2020 to pay for an ugly pinecone in the Upper West Side. Eric Garner died in the name of Marlboro. When I say Marlboro, I mean essentially all commercial goods. The laws that protect the largest companies from theft, essentially allow for a police officer to take a life, ruin a life, or ruin a day, if someone is accused wrongly of theft.

Think about it; Who does a loosie law even help or protect? First off I thought we hated cigarettes in this city? New Yorkers pay some of the highest taxes on cigarettes in the country, at $4.35 per pack, tied with Connecticut, and only beaten by Puerto Rico and D.C. in terms of Dollars per pack. I always loved that one SNL skit, where Fred Arminson plays an understanding Mayor Bloomberg, who will let everything slide except for ONE THING: he better not see a SINGLE person smoking a cigarette in the park. Those laws put in place in NYC to stop smoking indoors and in certain public places were known as silly at best, and Draconian at worst, around the country in the early 2000s. I was a kid and even I remember the controversy all over talk radio…. In retrospect, after typing all of that out, maybe it’s perfectly consistent that someone was murdered here over a loosie by the police, but I digress and again pose the same question as earlier: Who do loosie laws even help? I’ve grown up here in Brooklyn my whole life, and I will tell you right now, if I wanted a cigarette at 16, I would have figured it out, and I am not that crafty, nor was I ever. Hypothetically, lets say it does stop young people from smoking cigarettes, just based on a full pack being more expensive, I’m also willing to bet that education has probably done more to curb adolescent cigarette use, since education on the effects of cigarette has improved at the same time that legislation against cigarettes exploded in the 90s and 00s. At least in my case, I never ended up becoming a smoker because everyone knows cigarettes kill, and kill painfully, and viciously. We all remember the graphic advertisements when they first ran on cable television in New York, and the controversy every time another new and graphic ad hit the cable television waves. It is no longer a secret that cigarettes kill. But, from the laws that dictate where you can, and can’t, smoke, to the infamous taxes that turn a $5 pack in Florida, into a $12 pack in NYC, which MIGHT stops young people from buying full packs illegally, but creates a loose market, especially when you’re making it more expensive to smoke for even legal smokers, so now you have a new “problem” where more people of legal age are buying loosies instead of a full pack, which you don’t need an ID for anyway now, since the whole transaction is illegal, and on top of that, deli owners lose money when people just want 1 cigarette because they don’t wanna buy the whole $12 pack because once that pack is opened, you have to sell all the cigarettes 1-by-1. Efficiency and the laws around selling 1 stupid cigarette are somehow so complicated literally protect big tobacco.

On top of all this, I also want to point out Eric Garner was killed solely because he was suspected and accused by the police of selling loosies, over and over again prior to his death, and not only was the evidence that he was running a “loosie ring” not there, but so WHAT if he was? Running a “Loosie Ring” sounds like the lamest crime ever, something a man running a prostitution ring would laugh at you for in whatever jail you go to for selling loose cigarettes in New York City. Cigarettes kill you anyway, and as we can see, whether you smoke 12, 1 by 1, from a pack that you own, or 1 by 1, straight from the store owner, what does it matter. Shoot, it is probably better to buy 1 solely from the deli guy, for your own health. A lot of NY legislation lead to this direct murder, legislation built to protect cigarette companies profits. In this case, the police intruded so much in this guys day to day affairs, it turned into police harassment, a confrontational situation, and then murder/manslaughter, although, I personally think it’s murder, but again, I digress.

So I want to get back to my 2 main points here. What is the ‘Thin Blue Line’? And how did Marlboro kill Eric Garner? Again I ask, who benefits from loosie laws? I can think of 2 groups of people, the cigarette companies, and the city. The city is in the business of collecting tax revenue, it is the same reason why they are considering bringing casinos into a city of alcoholics to compete with the bars that are losing money, why everything is oftentimes over priced here, and why people are fleeing; NYC is one of the most taxed cities in the country, and the barrier for opening a business here is high if you do not have a lot of money on hand. The other group are large cigarette companies. They want people buying their product as it is, and I’m pretty sure Marlboro doesn’t sell single cigarettes, unless I’m uneducated on their menu, but I’ve never seen one behind the deli counter ever. Which brings me to the ‘Thin Blue Line’. People often say the line represents the police and how they protect us from the ‘bad guys’, and they deserve our respect. I look at that line a little bit differently. First, which way is that line facing? It’s just a line, it runs through the middle of a black American flag, but it doesn’t face a direction. So while on one end the police on a daily basis absolutely help people, and I myself have had plenty of positive interactions with the NYPD, on the other end, they have no responsibility to regular citizens in 2021. They end up protecting the luxury stores and building perimeters around malls when protests happen, and you can see that thin blue line when it faces you in front of Atlantic-Barclays Center, putting more people in cuffs than at the Capitol, on the infamous 6th of January.

The other definition of the ‘Thin Blue Line’ is the constant internal battle the police face as a whole; The ‘Thin Blue Line’ between fighting tyranny, and terrorizing the public through mass incarceration, defending poor legislation created by the various Neo-Liberal and Neo-Conservative/Neo-Fascist leaders at every level of government, over the last 6 decades. It’s something an officer and a police force has to wrestle with everyday, whether he likes it or not, realizes it or not, and if he’s a good officer and the force is good, and most importantly, the laws the police enforce are Just, we don’t have these problems. The legislators don’t make those laws, and the people down the chain should catch it if they can, even down to the smallest officer, walking into the deli. That is the hard part. Saying “no” to an entire law enforcement chain that is ranked higher than you, because you serve Democracy. That. Is. The. Hard. Part. But if an officer stakes out a deli everyday, doesn’t question anyone or even understand where he is in the cog, and just follows the orders of his superior, who follow the order of the leaders of the police, who work with legislators to create laws that protect the police and large firms, and not the public, who are instructed to look for a crime committed by a deli guy, specifically a crime where someone is selling loose cigarettes, in the name of either protecting Marlboro or in the name of tax revenue, at that point you’re sending the police at citizens to take their money, and not even just citizens, small business owners, that’s Tyrannical, Mob-esque tactics, plainly.

The next Mayor needs to pray and spray, and he needs to make sure everyone knows who they are in the cog of the law enforcement machine, especially he himself. Get rid of these stupid laws that protect billion dollar conglomerates and banks from the working class, when they rip off the working class. A man was murdered over a loose cigarette, and there are hundreds of laws put in place by businesses here in NYC solely so that they can position the Thin Blue Line in front of their own profits at the citizens expense, in the name of Law and Order.