NYPD Chief to Make Announcement on Garner Cop Monday
NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill is expected to make an announcement Monday on the fate of the police officer accused of using a banned chokehold on Eric Garner in 2014. A departmental trial judge recommended termination earlier this month after weeks of testimony.
O'Neill's decision, expected early Monday afternoon, will be final, closing the years-long book on embattled NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo, whom a local grand jury and federal prosecuters all declined to criminally prosecute. Late last week, News 4 had reported that the number two official at the NYPD had accepted the judge's ruling that Pantaleo lose his job and handed the findings over to O'Neill.
At least one lingering question: Should O'Neill fire Pantaleo, will the officer keep his 13-year vested pension?
A spokesman for the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, Al O'Leary, posed another question to News 4 ahead of the anticipated decision: Regarding O'Neill, "Does he have the heart of a politician or the heart of a police officer?"
On Aug. 2, an NYPD trial judge found Pantaleo guilty of "reckless assault" when he used an impermissible chokehold on Garner, a 43-year-old Staten Island father, two sources previously told NBC 4 New York at the time. She found the officer not guilty of "intentional strangulation." An autopsy had found Garner's death was caused in part by a chokehold, ruling the case a homicide.
The NYPD had suspended Pantaleo for 30 days without pay, effective immediately following the judge’s recommendation. For Garner's daughter, Emerald, that ruling was bittersweet.
"This has been a long battle, five years too long, and finally someone has said there is information this cop did something wrong," she said following the judge's initial recommendation. "It's been way too long to say he did something wrong."
Mayor de Blasio, who has come under aggressive criticism during his presidential campaign for not firing Pantaleo (which, as a matter of law, he cannot do), cheered the judge’s ruling earlier this month.
Following the recommendation to fire Pantaleo, his lawyer, Stuart London, maintained that the officer's case had been won in the courtroom but lost due entirely to politics. However, London previously said he remained "cautiously optimistic" that Pantaleo wouldn't be fired.
The chokehold or no-chokehold debate was the crux of the entire case against Pantaleo. Prosecutors had argued the video, which captured Garner's dying words, "I can't breathe," clearly showed Pantaleo use a banned chokehold -- and the medical examiner's autopsy report listed a chokehold as the cause of his death. Health factors, including obesity and high blood pressure, were mentioned as contributing factors in that report.
Defense attorneys submitted at trial that the move Pantaleo was seen using was not an illegal chokehold, but a department-approved takedown move used to subdue suspects resisting arrest -- and that his arm was not around Garner's neck when he said, repeatedly, "I can't breathe."
His words became a rallying cry for the national movement against police brutality. Garner's family received $5.9 million from the city in 2015 to settle a wrongful death claim.
Photo Credit: News 4/AP Images
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