Positive Sociology

Try holding your breath for 27 seconds.  It's not easy.  Now try doing it under duress.  Or better yet, have someone hold you in a tight headlock for 17 of those 27 seconds.  Then, without pause, have that person roll you onto your stomach and pin you for the remaining 10.  Tell them to put their knee into your back.  Make sure that they lean their body weight down on you and pin your face to the ground.  If you do this, you might have a small window into what Eric Garner must have felt when he got choked to death by Officer Daniel Pantaleo. As a sociologist, I collect and analyze videos to understand human behavior in different situations.  I’ve used videos to understand how rappers keep tense battles from becoming violent and have also used videos to trace how people escape embarrassing situations. I watched Eric Garner’s arrest video last night and was deeply troubled by what I saw.   Officer Pantaleo applied 27 seconds of choking pressure to Eric Garner’s neck an