New York – Federal civil rights prosecutors have recommended charging a white New York City police officer for putting Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, in a fatal choke hold during a 2014 arrest, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing unnamed officials.
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But senior officials in the U.S. Justice Department have reservations about accepting the recommendation and indicting the officer, Daniel Pantaleo, because the case might not be winnable, the Times reported.
Garner, a 43-year-old father of six, was stopped by police on July 17, 2014, for illegally peddling cigarettes on a Staten Island sidewalk. Garner argued with police and was tackled by Pantaleo, who brought Garner to the ground with an arm around his neck. Choke holds have long been banned in the New York Police Department.
“I can’t breathe!” Garner repeatedly said in widely seen cellphone video of the arrest. His dying words would become a rallying cry for protesters across the United States critical of racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
Garner’s death was ruled a homicide, and the city agreed to pay his family $5.9 million to settle a wrongful death claim.
In December 2014, a New York City grand jury voted not to charge Pantaleo in Garner’s death, sparking further protests. Garner’s family has been critical of how much time the federal investigation by the Justice Department has taken.
Pantaleo, who remains at the department on desk duty, could not immediately be reached for comment, and the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the Times report.
I am opinionless about the merits of the legal case. A good debater could convince me either way. But I do know one thing. The decision must be politics free. It must ignore what the black community wants or thinks. Either there is a legal case or there isn’t. It is absurd to use a different yardstick here. Our courts are here to serve the case of justice, according to existing laws. Not the interests of a community to make a point.
clearly this the deep state not our honorable Jeff Sessions.
Pantaleo cost the taxpayers of the City of New York, nearly 6 million dollars; he should have been fired, since he used a banned choke hold, The NYPD previously stated that it banned the use of that combative technique. A man lost his life, over selling illegal cigarettes, and being “too uppity”. We cannot have two standards here. When a frum man in Borough Park was shot to death in 1999 by several cops, for allegedly holding a hammer, and not dropping it (he did not charge at the cops with the hammer), there were calls from the frum community for justice. However, nothing was done. The cops were never indicted, and the Justice Dept., and the FBI did bupkis. The only time something meanful was ever done about a rogue cop was in 1999, when a rogue talena cop in the 70th precinct was sentenced by a federal judge to 30 years in prison, for torturing a Haitian security guard, with his night stick, in the rest room of the 70th precinct. The cop who did the torturing is still behind bars. However, the justice achieved in that casecase was one out of hundreds, whereby rogue cops routinely, beat and even kill citizens, without legal justification.
A policeman did not know how to handle a routine arrest and squeezed the life out of a man. When the ambulance arrived, the EMTs laughed.