From [INDYBAY] WeCopwatch writes: Our lives changed on July 17, 2014 as images were broadcast across the globe of Staten Island plain clothes officers choking Eric Garner to death. For Ramsey Orta, the young man who filmed the killing, it would start a cycle of state sponsored repression that continues to this very day. Ironically, since White NYPD Cops Murdered Eric Garner — the only person convicted has been Orta.

In 2014, after assembling a grand jury white prosecutors declined to file any charges against the lone officer targeted. At that time Orta revealed the fact that the entire grand jury was white; a fact that the dependent media apparently had intended to omit from history. [Yes, an all white grand jury in NYC, the Blackest city in the US with the largest population of African Americans [MORE] White prosecutors had over 2 million Blacks to choose from and chose none!] Orta said, “when I went to the grand jury to speak on my behalf, nobody in the grand jury was even paying attention to what I had to say,” Orta said. “People were on their phones, people were talking. I feel like they didn't give (Garner) a fair grand jury." A white man he described as a prosecutor “wasn’t even asking no questions about the police officer, he was asking all the questions towards Eric,” Orta said. “What was Eric doing there? Why was Eric there?” "It was all-white." [MORE]

Ramsey was targeted and arrested by NYPD officers on trumped up gun charges and only a few months later was also indicted on multiple drug charges. It didn’t stop there. Ramsey Orta was arrested multiple times after Garner's 2014 death. He was accused in 2014 of stuffing a gun into a 17-year-old girl's pants — a charge he has called "ridiculous" — and accused in 2014 and 2015 of selling drugs to undercover officers, DNAinfo reported.

"There's no chance I'm dumb enough to give a girl a gun out in the open like that," Orta told The Verge. "The cops had been following me every day since Eric died, shining lights in my house every night. You think I'm walking around with a stolen gun that now they say wasn't even loaded?"

Additionally, while locked up on Rikers Island, Ramsey, along with other inmates, was able to document that yes, rat poison had intentionally been put in their food. A profile on Orta in The Verge documented his struggles in prison and belief that the charges against him were retaliatory. He pled guilty to gun and drug charges [apparently all misdemeanors] in 2016 and was sentenced to four years in jail. [MORE] Ramsey is scheduled to be released in July of 2020. Indybay has launched an email campaign for his release.

This [COVID-19] pandemic is not isolated to Rikers Island. It is spreading and it is spreading fast. Ramsey has been in solitary confinement at Midstate Correctional Facility since the outbreak. We are concerned that the NYDOCC will take this opportunity to allow Ramsey to die so they can be done with him once and for all.