On July 17th, 2014, four years ago this week, Eric Garner died in Staten Island at the hands of a New York City police officer,

which we probably wouldn't even know about if it weren't for a cell phone video that captured Garner's arrest,

the chokehold and the excessive force that would kill him, and also his

final words.

I can't breathe.

I can't breathe became a rallying cry for protesters, intensified after Staten Island grand jury

failed to indict the officer responsible for his death.

I can't breathe! I can't breathe! I can't free! The national media couldn't look away.

A white NYPD officer not indicted in the death of...

The coroner says that this is a homicide, end of story.

Justice Department has announced a federal investigation into the Garner case now that this

grand jury decision has come down. Until they did look away. And that brings us to this week.

Sick of years of delays by the Justice Department, on Monday, the NYPD gave the feds an ultimatum. It said that it would begin

disciplinary proceedings for the two officers involved if the Justice Department did not announce

by August 31st whether it will file criminal charges. Matt Taibi is a journalist and author of the

book, I Can't Breathe, a killing on Bay Street, an exploration of Eric Garner's life and death in the media and in real life. I spoke to him last year.

Eric Garner was a complex, funny, contradictory, flawed person, a guy who got behind the eight ball a little bit early

in life, married when he was still in his teens and his wife had children already. He started

down a road of dealing drugs before he really figured life out and things kind of happened to him.

How old was he? He was 43 at the time. He had diabetes. He worked selling cigarettes out in

the streets eight, nine, ten hours a day, rain or shine on his feet all day long. One of his

dreams was to be able to sit down at work. He had a dream about a stool. And, you know, that was just

...