The daughter of NYPD chokehold victim Eric Garner screamed at organizers of a town hall meeting on race relations and community policing Thursday after missing a chance to speak with the host — President Obama.
An upset Erica Garner could be heard backstage shouting profanities as Obama shook hands with audience members because she wasn’t allowed to ask the president a question at an hour-long program hosted by ABC.
“I want to talk to the President,” Garner demanded as the Washington event concluded. “You all jerked me around.”
Garner later took to Twitter to express her outrage.
“I need all of you to know that this #ABC town hall that will air at 8pm is a sham. They shut out ALL real and hard questions,” she wrote.
“They lied to me and my family to get us to travel to DC to participate. Taking time away from things I had planned to remember my father.”
According to a CNN producer, Obama met with Garner after the event entitled “The President and the People,” which aired Thursday at 8 p.m.
Garner’s brother Emery Snipes was also at the event.
The woman’s emotional outburst came just days before she and her family were scheduled to commemorate the second anniversary of her father’s appalling death at the hands of police in Staten Island.
Cops were trying to arrest Eric Garner on an allegation he was selling loose cigarettes on July 17, 2014, when Officer Daniel Pantaleo placed him in a banned chokehold and wrestled him to the sidewalk. Garner pleaded for his life, saying, “I can’t breathe” over and over again.
The fatal takedown was captured on cell phone video, and it became a flashpoint for the Black Lives Matter movement that has grown with subsequent police-involved deaths of black people.
Obama’s appearance came a week after two black men were killed by officers in Louisiana and Minnesota — controversial shootings that sparked protests across the country.
At one protest in Dallas on July 7, five police officers were shot and killed in retaliation by a vengeful black gunman armed with an assault rifle.
Cops killed him with an explosive after the attack.
On Tuesday, Obama gave a moving tribute at a Dallas memorial in their honor, where he touched on the nation’s racial divide. The nation’s first black President discussed similar themes at the D.C. town hall.
“The question, I think, for all of us is how do we try to lessen those barriers and those misunderstandings?” Obama said.
“And some of it involves us being very conscious of our assumptions because white folks and Latino folks also carry some assumptions,” he said.
“You may see a police officer who’s doing everything right and you automatically assume the worst rather than the best in him. And we have to guard against that as well. And that has to be reflected in how we talk about these issues going forward.”
Obama also met with Pei Xia Chen, the widow of NYPD Officer Wenjian Liu, and Maritza Ramos, the widow of NYPD Detective Rafael Ramos.
The two cops were gunned down in Brooklyn in December, 2014 by a career criminal on a twisted mission to avenge the deaths of Garner and Ferguson, Mo., teen Michael Brown.
Obama fielded questions from police officers, students, community leaders.
The President said his empathy for blacks and their issues with police were rooted in his own experiences as an African-American man.
“What is true for me, is true for a lot of African-American men, is there’s a greater presumption of dangerousness that arises from the social and cultural perceptions that have been fed to folks for a long time,” Obama said.
“And I think it is not as bad as it used to be, but it’s still there and there’s a history to that.”
Obama recalled being a kid growing up in Hawaii with his white grandparents and encountering a neighbor at the elevator.
“I still remember when I was 10 years old walking into the elevator and there was a woman who I thought knew me and as soon as I walked on, and she lived on my grandparents’ floor, when I walked on, she got off,” Obama said.
“And I was puzzled. I said, ‘Do you want to come up?’ And she said no. And then I went up and then I saw the elevator go back down and I just kind of peeked out the peephole and I could see she came right back up but was just worried about riding the elevator with me.”
Others at the town hall included Michael Brown’s mother, Lezley McSpadden, and Cameron Sterling, whose father Alton, was killed by police last week in Baton Rouge, La.
