That Staten Island Grand Jury

The borough is far more supportive of police violence than anywhere else in the city:

In an average of Quinnipiac University polls taken in August and November, only 41 percent of Staten Island residents supported bringing charges against Officer Daniel Pantaleo (the margin of error on these combined subsamples is 7 percentage points). In New York overall, 64 percent approved of criminal charges. Staten Island isn’t like the rest of the city.

Half of Staten Islanders thought it was “understandable that the police could have acted” the way they did in the Garner case, compared to 43 percent who said there was “no excuse.” Again, that’s far lower than in the rest of the city, where 66 percent of residents indicated to pollsters that there was “no excuse.” … Staten Island’s adult citizen population — the group from which the grand jury was drawn — is almost 70 percent non-Hispanic white; New York overall is majority non-white.