RUSH: Here’s John in Old Bridge, New Jersey. John, I’m glad you called. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Longtime listener. I’m a retired police officer, 30 years’ experience, and I just wanted to comment on the arrest of the Garner individual. Never in any police academy that I ever attended or any after-academy training, you’re never taught how to make a misdemeanor arrest or a felony arrest with someone standing in front of you. You have to take that person’s liberty. You have to do it quickly. You do not give that person a chance to enrage or escalate the situation. And you have to use escalation of force.

When they told that man, “You’re under arrest,” and he raised his hands and pushed away and then he pushed away a second time, your partners are there, they have to take him down. You can do it with a baton, which would look ugly. You could do it with mace. You could do it with a Taser, all of which could have caused him a heart attack. Unfortunately, they did it the easiest way; they put him in a headlock. They took him to the ground gently. He was laying on the ground. They were holding him down. No one kicked him. No one punched him.

RUSH: Yeah, but he was trying to shout that he couldn’t breathe.

CALLER: He had positional asphyxiation, Rush, and that’s a civil matter. That’s not a criminal matter. If you put a guy down legally onto the ground, you effected an arrest.

RUSH: Okay, so I’m real short on time. Are you defending the cops? Is that the point of your call?

CALLER: I’m defending the arrest.

RUSH: Defending the arrest.

CALLER: I’m defending the way the arrest was made.

RUSH: All right. Okay.

CALLER: When he was on the ground —

RUSH: I gotta run. He’s got 30 years experience. He’s a cop from New Jersey.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Dennis in New York City. Retired sergeant, NYPD. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. Longtime listener.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: God bless you. You’re a great American.

RUSH: Thank you very much, sir, I appreciate it that.

CALLER: Rush, I just want to make a comment about the situation with Eric Garner in Staten Island. One of the chief complaints among the many from the Ferguson situation with Officer Wilson was that he did not wait for backup after the initial confrontation with Brown. So now look at the situation in Staten Island. Those cops walked up to Eric Garner. They knew right away, probably after the first five minutes, that he was not going to comply and go peaceable.

So what did they do? They called for backup, and that’s evidenced by the tape. So, with six cops there, he still was not going to comply with the lawful order. So I hear the president and the mayor talking about how they have to retrain the police. Well, you can have all the training in the world, but unless people will comply with lawful orders, this is gonna be a recurring situation.

RUSH: Exactly. I know the race industry is trying to create a racial component here, but the sergeant in command on scene is a black female, was on site watching this. This was not racial. The comparisons, I understand people are trying to make them, “Well, okay, the Gentle Giant, so he goes in and robs a convenience store, yeah. Okay, Eric Garner, misdemeanor selling illegal cigarettes, and these two guys are dead?” The comparisons don’t hold up for reasons beyond what Dennis here just said.

But there’s an effort to make this a racial situation in New York, and there’s nobody — well, this is not true. I was gonna say there’s nobody that can possibly believe these cops in Staten Island went hunting. They were called to the scene by a shop owner, for crying out loud. But it doesn’t matter. Folks, remember, power, not truth, is what’s taking place here. People who think they got power are trying to define the truth for the rest of us.