One former president is perplexed over the Eric Garner decision.
Former President George W. Bush said the New York grand jury decision not to indict the police officer who caused Eric Garner’s death was “hard to understand.”
“You know, the verdict was hard to understand,” he said in an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley. “But I hadn’t seen all the details — but it’s sad that race continues to play such an emotional, divisive part of life.”
When watching the July footage of the NYPD police officer choking Garner, Bush said he thought, “how sad.”
Bush also revealed that he discussed the Ferguson case with his former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is black, over a recent dinner.
“We talked about this subject, and yeah — she just said, you gotta understand that there are a lot of black folks that are incredibly, more and more, distrusting of law enforcement,” Bush said. “Which is a shame, because law enforcement’s job is to protect everybody.”
Bush did say, however, that race relations in the U.S. have improved since he grew up in the 1970s.
