As New York City marked another day of protest, the widow of Eric Garner said Sunday that her husband, who died this summer after police on Staten Island put him in a chokehold, was "murdered unjustly."
"I really don't feel like it's a black and white thing," Esaw Garner said on NBC's "Meet the Press," adding that she believes her husband's death was the culmination of prolonged harassment by police.
"They knew him by name," she said. "They harassed us. They said things to us."
Garner said her husband struggled with health problems and difficulty holding down a job - at one point even describing him as "lazy." But, she said, in his run-ins with police he never resisted arrest.
Now, Garner said, she fears for herself and her children.
"I'm so afraid of what could happen to them in the street by the police. I'm afraid of the police. ... That's why I left Staten Island," she said.
The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment on her claims of harassment.
Despite a grand jury's decision not to indict NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo in her husband's death, which was ruled a homicide by the city's Medical Examiner, Esaw Garner said she is still looking for her day in court.
"I think it would, you know, only be right - not only for my husband but for all the other young men and women, and my sons," she said. "I have two sons, you know, that I have to train now. I have a 15-year-old; I won't even let him go two blocks away from my house."
She asked the teenager - one of the couple's six children - not to go out on Halloween this year, she said. Instead, she bought up all kinds of candy at a drug store that he could eat at home.
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Hundreds of people have been arrested during days of largely peaceful protests around New York City since the decision. Demonstrators around the country have chanted Garner's final words - caught on amateur videotape that has been viewed millions of times since his death: "I can't breathe."
Marchers are set to gather Dec. 13 in Washington to call on Congress to hold hearings and pass legislation improving the state grand juries that choose whether or not to indict police officers accused of excessive force against civilians.
