"I would settle for less f**king tragedy," Jon Stewart said Wednesday night.
After a Staten Island, N.Y., grand jury issued no indictment against police officer Daniel Pantaleo for chokeholding Eric Garner to death, Stewart called the ruling "all harm, no foul," on his "The Daily Show." (Video above and >>here.)
Unlike the shooting of Michael Brown, Garner's death was videotaped. There was no conflicting evidence, Stewart said.
New Yorkers took to the streets Wednesday and Thursday to protest the ruling, chanting "I can't breathe" - Garner's last words - according to a New York Times report. At least 30 protestors were arrested in Manhattan Wednesday afternoon, police said.
Late Wednesday night, a group of 500 marched in downtown New York, according to another NYT report. Thursday, shortly after midnight eastern time, hundreds of protestors marched across the Brooklyn Bridge.
The U.S. Justice Department will investigate to see if Garner's riots were violated, according to the Chicago Tribune.
In an editorial, The New York Times seems to agree with Stewart's assessment: The grand jury probably saw the same video displayed media coverage of the event. "The imbalance between Mr. Garner's fate ... is grotesque and outrageous," the editorial board wrote.
Yet the grand jury was especially unlikely to indict in this case, according to a FiveThirtyEight report. Staten Island residents, who made up the jury, are particularly sympathetic to the New York Police Department relative to other parts of the city. Citing an average of Quinnipiac University polls in August and November, only 41 percent of Staten Island residents were in favor of charges against officer Pantaleo compared with 64 percent citywide. Had the trial been in another part of New York City, the report states, the juror pool might have been less favorable to the NYPD.